2‐Gb/s all‐optical serial digital‐to‐analog converter

A fiber-optic combined serial-to-parallel and digital-to-analog converter is proposed and demonstrated. The system is based on bit interleaving and cross-gain modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier. The demonstrated 3-bit digital converter operates at 2 Gb/s, however, the proposed architecture could be easily modified to operate at higher bit-rates. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1561–1565, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24397