Signal Conditioning
Signal Conditioning is an important part of an analogue control systems because it prepares
the analog system for the next stage of the process, some of the tasks it carries out are
filtering, amplifying and isolation. Isolation is important when you want to focus in on one
signal rather than multiple, it does this by focusing on a set signal on one wavelength and
filtering out any others until the signal is isolated. Analogue to Digital Converters (ADC) often
use signal conditioning when converting. Signal conditioning is essentially manipulating an
analog system to meet the requirements of the next stage for further processing. Signal
conditioning improves accuracy, effectiveness and safety due to amplification, isolation and
filtering. Another example of this is if a small analogue signal is milliVolt instead of a volt then
it will require amplification.
Noise Filtering
Noise is an interruption of electronic factors, analogue signals can have a lot of distortion
and noise, especially on higher frequencies. If this distortion is too much you can use noise
filtering to make it more understandable. To do this is filters out background noise and
isolates the correct signal.
Level Shifting
Level shifting is needed to increase the voltage for the system or decrease, for example if an
operating voltage of an analogue device is different from the operating voltage of the ADC
then level shifting will need to take place to level out the voltages. Digital logic levels which
use 0s and 1s have voltage levels which represent high and low signals, without level
shifting a signal could be misread or cause damage to the circuit. The main reasons that
these voltages need shifting is because ADC devices can only work with certain signal
ranges and signals too high or low will not be picked up.
Matching to Sensors
Sensors only produce a finite output, this output is not going to be able to go directly through
the input of a computer. To reach the required range it might have to go through various
stages, to match these frequencies to a converter so for example, the correct sensor can be
used, it will have to matched to the converter so it can accurately receive and interpret the
signal.
Analogue to Digital Conversion (ADC)
Signals can be analogue or digital, however some devices can only handle one or the other.
This is why we need to convert the signals, to do this we need an ADC.
Analogue devices only use a single property of an event to measure its property, for this
assignment we will talk where the analogue has an electrical property. Typically when a
voltage or frequencies values are too high a control system is unable to handle the
continuous currents, this is where an ADC comes in. An ADC uses pulse code modulation
which samples the analogue signal and converts that sample into a series of digital values.
Characteristics of Digital Control Systems
Speed
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