A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is a system that converts a digital signal to an analog signal. A digital-to-analog converter basically consists of 4 parts, including a weighted resistor network, an operational amplifier, a reference power supply, and an analog switch.
The most common digital-to-analog converter converts the parallel binary digital quantity into DC voltage or DC current. It is often used as the output channel of the process control computer system and is connected to the actuator to realize the automatic control of the production process. Digital-to-analog converter circuits are also used in analog-to-digital converter designs that utilize feedback techniques.
An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is a device that converts continuous analog signals into discrete digital signals. Digital-to-analog converters are generally used in analog-to-digital converters.
The role of the digital-to-analog converter
With the development of digital electronic technology, especially the development and popularization of computer technology, the application of processing analog signals with digital circuits has become more and more extensive in many fields such as automatic control, communication and detection.
Most of the physical quantities that exist in nature are continuously changing physical quantities, such as temperature, time, speed, flow, pressure, etc. To use digital circuits, especially computers, to process these physical quantities, these analog quantities must first be converted into digital quantities that can be recognized by the computer, and the digital quantities that have been analyzed and processed by the computer need to be converted into corresponding analog quantities. Effective control of the controlled object requires a circuit that can act as a bridge between analog and digital: analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion circuits.
The role of the digital-to-analog converter is to convert digital signals into analog signals, such as computer-controlled traffic lights, temperature measurement systems, clock displays, computer lights, and electronic musical instruments.
In addition to the typical application of digital to analog conversion in microcomputer systems, digital-to-analog converters are also commonly used in waveform generation and various digital programmable applications. Such as waveform generators, digitally controlled DC voltage regulators, and digital programmable gain control circuits.
Digital-to-analog converters are commonly used in music players to convert digital data streams into analog audio signals. They are also used in televisions and mobile phones to convert digital video data to analog video signals, which are then connected to screen drivers to display monochrome or color images.
These two applications use DACs on opposite ends of the frequency/resolution tradeoff. Audio DACs are low frequency high resolution types, while video DACs are high frequency low to medium resolution types.
