Abstract

Photodetector nonlinearities can limit the performance of high-dynamic-range analog optical systems.^1,2 For systems that use short optical pulses to process or transmit analog information, this limitation is magnified due to the higher peak intensity at the photodetector input. In this paper, we examine the trade-off between signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and linearity in optically sampled analog-to-digital converters(ADCs) due to saturation of the photodetector responsivity.

© 2002 Optical Society of America