All-optical balanced detection system
First Claim
1. A sampling arrangement for performing balanced detection of a pair of input data signals, the sampling arrangement comprisingat least one pair of sampling gates, a first sampling gate of said pair responsive to a first input signal of the pair of input signals and a second sampling gate of said pair responsive to a second input signal of said pair of input signals, each sampling gate creating a stream of samples representative of the respective input signal applied thereto;
- a strobe source for controlling the at least one pair of sampling gates to open and close at a predetermined sampling frequency fs;
an adjustable delay line disposed at the input of one sample gate of said at least one pair of sampling gates for minimizing differences in path lengths between each input signal and each sampling gate; and
a processor configured to perform balanced detection of the sampled pair of input signals to generate as an output a sampled balanced detected version of said input signal pair.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A two gate sampling system designed to perform sampled balanced detection of one or more input signal pairs. The present invention performs simultaneous sampling of both signals in each signal pair followed by digitization and combination of the sample pairs using software. By first sampling the signals and then combine the sampled into the corresponding balanced detected signal it is possible to avoid the bandwidth limitations and impedance problems introduced by traditional balanced detectors and electrical oscilloscopes. In particular for optical sampling gates very high bandwidth sampling gates can be designed without any impedance issues and hence almost perfect balanced detection reconstruction can be performed for very high speed signals. Balanced detection is becoming more and more important as the new phase modulated optical data signals are introduced to the market, such as e.g. PSK, DPSK, QPSK and DQPSK. The present invention is well suited for analysis of these new type of signals.
10 Citations
17 Claims
-
1. A sampling arrangement for performing balanced detection of a pair of input data signals, the sampling arrangement comprising
at least one pair of sampling gates, a first sampling gate of said pair responsive to a first input signal of the pair of input signals and a second sampling gate of said pair responsive to a second input signal of said pair of input signals, each sampling gate creating a stream of samples representative of the respective input signal applied thereto; -
a strobe source for controlling the at least one pair of sampling gates to open and close at a predetermined sampling frequency fs; an adjustable delay line disposed at the input of one sample gate of said at least one pair of sampling gates for minimizing differences in path lengths between each input signal and each sampling gate; and a processor configured to perform balanced detection of the sampled pair of input signals to generate as an output a sampled balanced detected version of said input signal pair. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
-
Specification