Elements of A/D Conversion

• An A/D converter is characterized by its range and its resolution.
• The range refers to the smallest and largest number the A/D converter can convert.
  • Let MIN and MAX denote the smallest and largest number, respectively, that the A/D converter can represent.
  • An amplifier is used to adjust the analog signal such that (almost) all samples will be between MIN and MAX.
• The resolution refers to the number of bits used to represent a sample value.
• The higher the number of bits the more accurately a number can be reconstructed from its binary representation.
• Perfect reconstruction is generally not possible - some quantization of the samples is unavoidable.