ADC

From uCtrl.net

Analog-to-digital converter.

Information

A device that converts analog voltage or current to a digital numeric value; 8-bit: 256, 10-bit: 1024. The values are usually stored electronically in binary form, so the resolution is usually expressed in bits. In consequence, the number of discrete values available, or levels, is usually a power of two. For example, an ADC with a resolution of 8 bits can encode an analog input to one in 256 different levels, since 2⁸ = 256. The values can represent the ranges from 0 to 255 (i.e. unsigned integer) or from -128 to 127 (i.e. signed integer).

• Example:
  • Full scale measurement range = 0 to 5 volts
  • ADC resolution is 10 bits: 2¹⁰ = 1024 quantization levels (codes)
  • ADC voltage resolution is: (5V - 0V) / 1024 codes = 5V / 1024 codes = 0.00488 volts/code = 4.88 mV/code

Resources

• Wikipedia article
• How ADCs Works