7.2 ADC and DAC hardware

There is a wide variety of hardware designs and techniques available to perform the functions of analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion. Each has relative advantages with regard to speed, resolution, overall accuracy, and cost of manufacture Horowitz and Hill (2015), Zuch (1979). Here, we will consider specific examples of a DAC and an ADC to illustrate how these design trade-offs arise.

7.2.1 R-2R Digital-to-Analog Converter

A DAC must accept a numerical input value and produce a proportional analog voltage at its output. One of the most common DAC designs is the R-2R ladder technique. R-2R DAC Digital-to-analog conversion!R-2R DAC A 4-bit version of a R-2R ladder DAC is shown in Figure 7.5. A ladder arrangement of resistors is connected to an op-amp follower¹ that provides the analog output. The \(n=4\) bits of the integer input value control the …