Estimation of Parameters of Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converters

The defining element of digital radio receivers is an analog-to-digital converter. ADCs implemented using microwave photonics are reaching a new level in performance. The properties and characteristics of converters of practical interest when used in the structure of radio receivers are considered. The advantage of the sampling frequency achieved by the ADC is determined, which allows processing GHz band signals without using frequency shift and pre-filtering. The possibility of increasing the carrier-to-noise ratio and the effective number of bits by increasing the average power on the photodiode is determined. A variant of increasing the average power on the diode by amplifying the modulating signal is presented. The requirements for the structure of the analog part to meet the conditions for increasing CNR and for using the full scale of the converter are determined.