Orthogonal Sampling Based High-Speed Transceiver Systems

The increasing demand for bandwidth-intensive applications, such as communication, sensing, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles, has led to a surge in traffic requirements. This growth necessitates the development of high-bandwidth systems capable of meeting the data transfer demands of future communication networks, including 6G and beyond. Traditional electronic systems, while trying to adapt, face limitations as bandwidth requirements grow, with challenges such as jitter, noise, and power consumption affecting system performance. These limitations necessitate the need for alternative approaches to signal generation and processing, particularly at very high frequencies. One promising solution lies in integrated photonics, which can exploit the high bandwidth, energy efficiency, and CMOS compatibility of photonic devices. Photonics, particularly optical signal processing, offers several advantages over electronics, including ultra-high speeds, low energy consumption, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. Recent advancements in silicon photonics, particularly the integration of photonics with electronics on a CMOS platform, have opened up new possibilities for signal processing, enabling the use of low-bandwidth electronics for high-bandwidth signal generation and detection. This thesis explores the use of orthogonal sampling with sincpulse sequences to bridge the gap between high-bandwidth signal requirements and low-bandwidth electronics. The first part of the work introduces an integrated, segmented IQ modulator that utilizes orthogonal sampling to generate high-bandwidth signals from low-bandwidth sources. The second part focuses on the analysis and experimental demonstration of a photonic analog-to-digital converter that leverages orthogonal sampling for bandwidth reduction and resolution improvement. The third part presents a novel system using cascaded ring modulators for broadband wireless signals, demonstrating a compact and energy-efficient solution for high-speed signal sampling. Finally, the thesis details the design and implementation of an optical frequency-division multiplexed -Nyquist-timedivision-multiplexed transceiver, which utilizes orthogonal sampling to reduce the processing load and bandwidth requirements. Through these innovations, this thesis provides significant contributions to the development of high-bandwidth and high-speed communication systems with low-bandwidth devices. The proposed techniques demonstrate the potential of photonics to meet the growing demands of modern communication networks while minimizing the requirements of the electronics.