Overcoming Resolution and Bandwidth limIT in radio-frequency Signal digitisation (ORBITS)

模数转换器（adc）是连接所有信号都是“模拟”的物理世界（例如，麦克风产生的电流或手机摄像头拍摄的照片）和我们存储、传输和处理信号和信息的“0”和“1”数字世界的重要纽带。模数转换器使（数字）计算机能够处理来自（模拟）物理世界的信号。这种能力彻底改变了我们的整个社会，使电脑（台式电脑、笔记本电脑或智能手机）无处不在。近年来，由于社会对数据和信息的需求不断增加，以及虚拟现实和增强现实等新兴应用的出现，我们目睹了产生、存储、传输和处理的信息量急剧增加。所有这些信息都需要通过adc进行处理，只有在具有更高的精度、可承受的功耗、实时（低延迟）和越来越宽的带宽（更快）信号的情况下，adc才能满足上述需求。对于现有的技术来说，这是极具挑战性的，学术界和工业界都在大力追求这一目标。这些方法中的大多数都是基于使用特定应用集成电路（asic）、光子时间拉伸或时间交错等策略。不幸的是，所有这些方法似乎都面临着巨大的挑战。目前还缺乏一条明确可行的路线，以实现下一代adc，以支持未来十年乃至更长时间的信息增长。orbit的目标是使用光学辅助手段为adc提供一种全新的、防未来增长的解决方案。具体而言，它将利用最近出现的光学和光子学技术的独特功能，包括光学频率梳，相干光学处理和精确光学相位控制。光学提供比目前用于adc的微波电子大三个数量级的带宽，并具有超快（飞秒级）响应的优势。光频梳技术与相干光处理和相位控制相结合，可以在光域中实现高精度的信号分割，克服了传统方法中的时序抖动（时间不确定性）等基本限制，为大带宽高分辨率adc开辟了可扩展和可集成的技术。为了实现实际（批量生产时的低成本、紧凑和低功耗），orbit将研究光学和电子集成，通过合作和开放代工厂，可以利用不同光子集成平台的优点。除了下一代adc， orbit还将研究在面向未来的高容量光学和无线通信中的应用。它汇集了来自大学和公司顶级研究小组的互补专业知识，旨在产生广泛的学术影响，并将直接的知识转移到行业。

Analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) are the essential links between physical world in which all signals are 'analogue' (e.g., electric current generated by a microphone or a picture captured by a mobile phone camera) and the digital world of '0s' and '1s', where we store, transmit and process signals and information. ADCs enable (digital) computers to process signals from the (analogue) physical world. This capability has revolutionised our entire society, making computers (desk-tops, lap-tops, or smartphones) ubiquitous. In recent years, we have witnessed a dramatic increase of the amount of information that is generated, stored, transmitted, and processed, driven by increased demand of our society on data and information and newly emerging applications such as virtual and augmented reality. All this information needs to be processed by ADCs, which can address the abovementioned need only when performing with better accuracy, affordable power consumption, in real-time (with low latency), and for increasingly broader bandwidth (faster) signals. This is extremely challenging with currently-existing technologies and is being vigorously pursued by both academia and industry. Most of these approaches are based on strategies like the use of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), photonic time stretch, or time interleaving. Unfortunately, all of these approaches seem to have formidable challenges. A clearly realisable route to next-generation ADCs that could support information growth in the next decade and beyond is currently lacking.ORBITS aims to provide a radically novel and future-growth-proof solution to ADCs using optical assisted means. Specifically, it will exploit unique features of recently-emerged optical and photonics technologies, including optical frequency combs, coherent optical processing, and precise optical phase control. Optics offers three orders of magnitude larger bandwidth than microwave electronics used for ADCs today and has the advantages of ultrafast (femtosecond level) responses. The optical frequency comb technologies, in conjunction with coherent optical processing and phase control, enables dividing signal with high accuracy in the optical domain, which overcomes the fundamental limits such as timing jitter (time uncertainty) in conventional approaches, opening up a scalable and integratable technology for large bandwidth high resolution ADCs.For practical (low-cost when volume-manufactured, compact, and low-power-consuming) implementation, ORBITS will investigate optical and electronic integration, which permit to harness merits across different photonics integration platforms, through collaborations and open foundries. Besides next-generation ADCs, ORBITS will study applications in future-proof high capacity optical and wireless communications. It assembles complementary expertise from top research groups in Universities and companies, aiming for a wide academic impact and a straightforward knowledge transfer to industry.