Architecture for integrated RF photonic downconversion of electronic signals

Electronic analog to digital converters (ADCs) are run-ning up against the well-known bit depth versus bandwidth trade off. Towards this end, radio frequency (RF) photonic-enhanced ADCs have been the subject of interest for some time. Optical frequency comb technology has been used as a workhorse underlying many of these architectures. Unfor-tunately, such designs must generally grapple with size, weight, and power (SWaP) concerns, as well as frequency ambiguity issues which threaten to obscure critical spec-tral information of detected RF signals. In this work, we address these concerns via an RF photonic downconverter with potential for easy integration and field deployment by leveraging a novel, to the best of our knowledge, hybrid microcomb/electro-optic comb design.(c) 2022 Optica Pub-lishing Group