High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Time-stretch analog-to-digital converter (TS-ADC) is an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) system that has the capability of digitizing very high bandwidth signals that cannot be captured by conventional electronic ADCs. Alternatively, it is also known as the Photonic Time Stretch (PTS) digitizer, since it uses an optical frontend. It relies on the process of time-stretch, which effectively slows down the analog signal in time (or compresses its bandwidth) before it can be digitized by a slow electronic ADC.