TABLE OF CONTENTS There are numerous advantages to processing signals using digital systems. And because of these advantages, digital systems are widely used for control, communication, computers, instrumentation, etc. In many such applications of digital systems, the signals are not available in the digital form. Therefore, to process these analog signals using digital hardware, they have to be converted into digital form. The process of conversion of analog signal to digital signal is referred as analog-to-digital conversion. The system that realizes the conversion is referred to as an analog-to-digital converter or A/D Converter or ADC.
The output of the system may be desired to be of analog form. Therefore, the output of the digital system is required to be converted back to the analog form. The process of converting the digital signal to analog form is called digital-to-analog conversion and the system used for this purpose is referred to as a digital to analog converter or D/A converter or DAC.
In the present trend of technology, most of the signal processing is based on digital systems. But the real-world signals are analog in nature. A/D converter and D/A converter are the bridge between the analog world and digital world. They find their applications in almost every system of signal processing. An elementary analog signal-processing system with the use of a digital processor is illustrated with the block diagram in Figure 10.1. In this chapter the D/A converter will be discussed first as it also serves...
