Digital broadband linearization technique and its application to photonic time-stretch analog-to-digital converter

Suppression of distortion induced by nonlinearity in a dynamical system (such as an analog optical link) is very challenging, particularly for a wide-bandwidth signal. Conventional compensation techniques are computationally intensive, significantly limiting their realization in real-time applications. Here, we propose and demonstrate an efficient digital postprocessing technique to suppress distortions added to a wideband signal by a nonlinear system with memory effect. Experimentally, digital broadband linearization of the photonic time-stretch analog-to-digital converter (TSADC) is demonstrated. In case of TSADC, a dynamic range improvement of >15 dB compared to conventional memory-less correction method is achieved.