CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The delta sigma modulator (DSM) is a device which transforms the amplitude information of an analog input signal to the duty cycle and frequency of a binary output. This device, typically employed in oversampled analog-to-digital converters, is based on a feedback loop which includes at least one integrator and one quantizer in the forward path. In this paper, a novel photonic second-order DSM is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The system is composed of two inverted leaky integrator and one electro-optic quantizer. The maximum input frequency is around 2 MHz, limited by the fiber length of the accumulator and feedback loops, and the quantizer rise/fall times. The system is characterized at different input frequencies and waveforms (sinusoidal and saw tooth) to analyze the modulator performance and linearity. The binary output is acquired, processed and demodulated using a personal computer, in order to reconstruct the input analog signal. The reported fiber-optic DSM is very promising for future integration increasing the operation frequency up to GHz range.