Integrated Photonically Assisted Samplers

High-speed ADCs operating in the tens of gigahertz up to potentially terahertz range are largely constrained by the jitter in their clock sources. By incorporating photonically assisted samplers that exploit the ultralow jitter of specific mode-locked lasers (MLLs) as analogue ADC frontends, the performance limits of data converters can be pushed to achieve unprecedented levels of accuracy. Continuous advancements in electronic-photonic integration (silicon photonics) are clearing the path for integrating these systems on a chip scale, thereby leading to increased scalability, as well as reduced cost and power consumption.