Low in-band spurious arbitrary waveform generator based on a 1-bit time-wavelength interleaved photonic digital-to-analog conversion

We proposed an arbitrary waveform generator based on a 1-bit photonic digital-to-analog conversion (PDAC). The system is based on the principle of photonic pulse sampling and time interleaving. High-speed optical pulses are generated and modulated by digital signals and then synthesized in one path. The analog signals are obtained by an optical-to-electrical conversion of the time-interleaved pulses. Due to the 1-bit structure, there are no spurious components in principle. In the experiment, a 1-bit PDAC of 50 GSa/s is realized, and the X-band linear frequency-modulated (LFM) waveform with a bandwidth of 4 GHz is generated, the signal-to-spur-rejection ratio is as high as 50 dB, and the millimeter-wave 64QAM signal is generated, with an EVM of 4.27%.