Digital To Analog Conversion

Digital To Analog Conversion

A DAC converts an abstract finite-precision number (usually a fixed-point binary number) into a concrete physical quantity (e.g., a voltage or a pressure). In particular, DACs are often used to convert finite-precision time series data to a continually-varying physical signal.

A typical DAC converts the abstract numbers into a concrete sequence of impulses that are then processed by a reconstruction filter using some form of interpolation to fill in data between the impulses.

Other DAC methods (e.g., methods based on Delta-sigma modulation) produce a pulse-density modulated signal that can then be filtered in a similar way to produce a smoothly-varying signal.By the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, sampled data can be reconstructed perfectly  provided that its bandwidth meets certain requirements (e.g., a baseband signal with bandwidth less than the Nyquist frequency). However, even with an ideal reconstruction filter, digital sampling introduces quantization that makes perfect reconstruction practically impossible. Increasing the digital resolution (i.e., increasing the number of bits used in each sample) or introducing sampling dither can reduce this error.

DACs are at the beginning of the analog signal chain, which makes them very important to system performance. The most important characteristics of these devices are: