Nabeela Z.

Khan

Experiment 5 : Digital to Analog Converter Objective: study of digital to analog converter using R2R ladder circuit. Equipments: Theory:
In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC or D-to-A) is a device that converts a digital (usually binary) code to an analog signal(current, voltage, or electric charge). An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performs the reverse operation. Signals are easily stored and transmitted in digital form, but a DAC is needed for the signal to be recognized by human senses or other non-digital systems. A common use of digital-to-analog converters is generation of audio signals from digital information in music players. Digital video signals are converted to analog in televisions and mobile phones to display colors and shades. Digital-to-analog conversion can degrade a signal, so conversion details are normally chosen so that the errors are negligible. Due to cost and the need for matched components, DACs are almost exclusively manufactured on integrated circuits (ICs). There are many DAC architectures which have different advantages and disadvantages. The suitability of a particular DAC for an application is determined by a variety of measurements including speed and resolution.

Trainer board. OpAmp 741 Resistors Wires

DACs are very important to system performance. The most important characteristics of these devices are: Resolution The number of possible output levels the DAC is designed to reproduce. This is usually stated as the number of bits it uses, which is the base two logarithm of the number of levels. For instance a 1 bit DAC is designed to reproduce 2 (2 ) levels while an 8 bit DAC is designed for 256 (2 ) levels. Resolution is related to the effective number of bits which is a measurement of the actual resolution attained by the DAC. Resolution determines color depth in video applications and audio bit depth in audio applications. Maximum sampling rate A measurement of the maximum speed at which the DACs circuitry can operate and still produce the correct output. As stated in the NyquistShannon sampling theorem defines a relationship between the sampling frequency and bandwidth of the sampled signal.
1 8

Digital and Analog Representations An analog signal can be represented with digital values at some time interval.

Four binary positions = 4-bit resolution 16 different representations Eight binary positions = 8-bit resolution 256 different representations

Operational amplifiers are important building blocks in analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) converters. They provide a means for summing currents at the input and converting a current to a voltage at the output of converter circuits. The operational amplifier is used in the circuit for scaling the value of output voltage. Operational Amplifier Basics

Very high input impedance Very high voltage gain Very low output impedance

DAC
DACs are electronic circuits that convert digital, (usually binary) signals (for example, 1000100) to analog electrical quantities (usually voltage) directly related to the digitally encoded input number. DACs are used in many other applications, such as voice synthesizers, automatic test system, and process control actuator. In addition, they allow computers to communicate with the real (analog) world.
Input Binary Number Analog Voltage Output Register

Voltage Switch

Resistive Summing Network

Amplifier

Register: Use to store the digital input (let it remain a constant value) during the conversion period. Voltage: Similar to an ON/OFF switch. It is closed when the input is 1. It is opened when the input is 0. Resistive Summing Network: Summation of the voltages according to different weighting. Amplifier: Amplification of the analog according to a pre-determined output voltage range. For examplean operation amplifier. The two most popular types of resistive summing networks are: 1) Weighted binary resistance type, and 2) Ladder resistance (R-2R) type DAC types The binary-weighted DAC, which contains individual electrical components for each bit of the DAC connected to a summing point. These precise voltages or currents sum to the correct output value. This is one of the fastest conversion methods but suffers from poor accuracy because of the high precision required for each individual voltage or current. Such high-precision components are expensive, so this type of converter is usually limited to 8-bit resolution or less The R-2R ladder DAC which is a binary-weighted DAC that uses a repeating cascaded structure of resistor values R and 2R. This improves the precision due to the relative ease of producing equal valued-matched resistors (or current sources). However, wide converters perform slowly due to increasingly large RC-constants for each added R-2R link. Binary-Weighted Digital-to-Analog Converters Sum of the currents from the input resistors Binary weighting factor

Disadvantages of Binary-Weighted Digital-to-Analog Converters Accurate resistance over a wide range is difficult Not practical for conversions greater than 4-bit

R/2R Ladder Digital-to-Analog Converters Only two resistor values 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 bit resolutions are common

The R/2R ladder D/A converter uses only two different resistor values, no matter how many binary input bits are included. This allows for very high resolution and ease of fabrication in integrated-circuit form.

Current division

analog output versus digital input

The process of translation of digital information into equivalent analog information is called as digital to analog conversion. Such converter is also called as decoding device. There are two types of

such converters

the

weighted

resistor

DAC

and

the

R2R

ladder

DAC.

The R2R ladder (binary ladder) is a resistive network whose output voltage is a properly weighted sum of the digital inputs. It uses resistors of only two values, the R and the 2R. The input to a DAC is a binary word of n-bits and the output is an analog value, as schematically shown in Figure a.

Figure : (a) DAC block diagram; (b) input-output characteristic of a DAC The n-bit word (or digital code) is a digital representation of a signal. The relationship between the analog output value and the binary word is for the case of a 3-bit code (b2,b1,bo), as follows: VDAC = K1 (b2/2 + b1 /4 + bo/8) Vref where VDAC =(b2/2 + b1 /4 + bo/8) FS in which K1 is a scale factor, Vref is a reference voltage, FS stands for Full Scale (=K1xVref) and bi is the ith bit of the digital word. The bit bo is called the least significant bit (LSB) and b3 is the most significant bit (MSB). Each time the LSB changes the analog output will change by a value equal to FS/2 for a three bit DAC (or by FS/2 for a N bit DAC). As an example, lets assume that the digital input is equal to (101), K1 = 1 and the reference Vref = 5V. The output voltage will then be: VDAC = K(1/2 + 0/4 +1/8) Vref = 5/8xVref = 5/8xFS = 3.125 V For each digital input (b2,b1,bo) there will be a corresponding output as shown in Figure b for a total of 2 = 8 possible digital words. Notice that only discrete values of the output signal are possible. The more bits the input word has, the smaller the steps of the output signal will be (or the better the resolution).
3 3 N

K1= Rf/R

Reference: 1. Pages 922, 923, 924, 925, 926 of Chapter 9 of Microelectronic Circuits by Sedra/Smith. 2. http://seminarprojects.com/Thread-study-the-working-of-4%E2%80%93bitr%E2%80%932r-ladder-d-a-converter-circuit 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor_ladder 4. http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ese206/labs/adc206/adc206.html

Circuit diagram:

2 U6

1 R4 1k R3 1k R1 1k R2 1k R5 1k

1 R7 1k R6 1k R8 1k

1 R9 1k R10 1k R15 1k

1 R12 1k R11 1k

R13 1k

R14 1k

uA741 2 -

4 V-OS1 1 6 OUT 5 V+ OS2 7

+ U2

Data: R 1K

Truth Table:

Observation # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

D3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

D2 0 0 0 0 1 1 1

D1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1

D0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

Vout

Nabeela Z. Khan

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1

1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1

Calculation

Questions:
1. 2.

Name some applications of DAC. The DAC circuit implemented in experiment 8 used what type of resistive summing network? What was the resolution of the DAC circuit? Which circuit element gives the resolution? How many levels can it reproduce? Determine Vout.

3.

4. 5.

Nabeela Z. Khan

6. 7. 8. 9.

What are the disadvantages of Binary-Weighted DAC? What is the advantage of R-2R ladder DAC? What is the purpose of the OpAmp in the circuit? For the following circuit find out K1, FS and VDAC for input 1010. [2 points]

Nabeela Z. Khan