320 GHz photonic-electronic analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) exploiting Kerr soliton microcombs

Dengyang Fang; Daniel Drayss; Huanfa Peng; Grigory Lihachev; Christoph Füllner; Artem Kuzmin; Pablo Marin-Palomo; Patrick Matalla; Prashanta Kharel; Rui Ning Wang; Johann Riemensberger; Mian Zhang; Jeremy Witzens; J. Christoph Scheytt; Wolfgang Freude; Sebastian Randel; Tobias J. Kippenberg; Christian Koos

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-01778-1

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320 GHz photonic-electronic analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) exploiting Kerr soliton microcombs

Original Articles

- 320 GHz photonic-electronic analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) exploiting Kerr soliton microcombs
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 9, Pages: 2530-2539(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPQ), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
  2.Teragear GmbH, 76227 Karlsruhe, Germany
  3.Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany
  4.Deeplight GmbH, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany | Deeplight SA, 1025 St. Sulpice VD, Switzerland
  5.Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), 1025 Saint-Sulpice, Switzerland
  6.Hyperlight Corporation, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
  7.Institute of Integrated Photonics (IPH), RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
  8.Heinz Nixdorf Institute (HNI), University of Paderborn, 33102 Paderborn, Germany
- Author bio：
  
  Dengyang Fang (dengyang.fang@kit.edu)
  Christian Koos (christian.koos@kit.edu)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-01778-1
  CLC：
- Received：05 August 2024，
  
  Revised：2025-01-22，
  
  Accepted：08 February 2025，
  
  Published Online：08 July 2025，
  
  Published：30 September 2025
- Accepted：
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Fang, D. Y. et al. 320 GHz photonic-electronic analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) exploiting Kerr soliton microcombs. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2530-2539 (2025).
DOI：

Fang, D. Y. et al. 320 GHz photonic-electronic analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) exploiting Kerr soliton microcombs. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2530-2539 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-01778-1.

摘要

Abstract

Kerr soliton microcombs have the potential to disrupt a variety of applications such as ultra-high-speed optical communications

ultra-fast distance measurements

massively parallel light detection and ranging (LiDAR) or high-resolution optical spectroscopy. Similarly

ultra-broadband photonic-electronic signal processing could also benefit from chip-scale frequency comb sources that offer wideband optical emission along with ultra-low phase noise and timing jitter. However

while photonic analogue-to-digital converters (ADC) based on femtosecond lasers have been shown to overcome the jitter-related limitations of electronic oscillators

the potential of Kerr combs in photonic-electronic signal processing remains to be explored. In this work

we demonstrate a microcomb-based photonic-electronic ADC that combines a high-speed electro-optic modulator with a Kerr comb for spectrally sliced coherent detection of the generated optical waveform. The system offers a record-high acquisition bandwidth of 320 GHz

corresponding to an effective sampling rate of at least 640 GSa/s. In a proof-of-concept experiment

we demonstrate the viability of the concept by acquiring a broadband analogue data signal comprising different channels with centre frequencies between 24 GHz and 264 GHz

offering bit error ratios (BER) below widely used forward-error-correction (FEC) thresholds. To the best of our knowledge

this is the first demonstration of a microcomb-based ADC

leading to the largest acquisition bandwidth demonstrated for any ADC so far.

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references

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