In the environment in which we live today, the phenomena are basically analog. Digital processing technology is increasingly advanced and present in our daily lives, so we need interfaces that convert analog information to digital information. We can start this understanding with a simple example, the devices that play CDs, converting digital information, digitally encoded music to analog form and the sound generated in loudspeakers.
About D / A
We say that the digital-to-analog DAC converter by Teledyne e2v converts a digital word into an analog signal in the form of an output voltage or current, they are formed by passive elements, reference sources, switches and AMPOPs. The conversion is generally parallel and the conversion time depends essentially on the speed of the components used.Analyzing the signals that are generated by analog circuits is often processed by digital circuits. For example, we have the microcontroller or a microcomputer. Certainly to process analog signals using digital circuits, a conversion must be made to the latter form, digital, where the conversion is carried out by an Analog-Digital Converter.
The received signal, after being digitized, is processed and, in most cases, it will be used to act on the analog circuit that generated the original signal or even on another circuit. Therefore, a signal in digital form, to be processed by an analog functional block, must be previously converted to the equivalent analog form. A system that accepts a digital word as an input and translates or converts the received value to an analog voltage or current proportional to the input is called a Digital-to-Analog Converter.
Concepts
Going a little deeper, we say that the input of a digital D / A converter consists of a digital coupling built from parallel binary signals that are generated from a signal processing system where we have a computer. The binary signals are converted to an equivalent analog signal by means of a reference, and then the resulting signal can pass through a filter and an amplifier. As for the analog output this can be a voltage or a current plus most D / A converters have an output in the form of voltage. It maps the input binary word to an analog value on the output so the analog values go through a second block, where each analog value is stored until the next binary word is converted.
What do D/A Converter do?
The main objective of D/A converter within a data acquisition system is to convert conditioned analog signals into a digital data stream, so that the data acquisition system can process them for display, storage and analysis. The DAC converter takes a digital signal and converts it to the analog domain.
What is Sample Rate?
The rate at which signals are converted is called the sample rate. Certain applications, like most temperature measurements, do not require a high rate, as signals do not change very quickly. However, AC voltages and currents, shocks and vibrations and many other applications require sampling rates at tens or hundreds of thousands of samples per second or more.