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 The first step is to get an electrical signal. The transducer (in our case, a microphone)
converts sound into an electrical signal. You can use any transducer depending upon the case.
 Once you have an analog electrical signal, we pass it through an operational amplifier (Op-
Amp) to condition the analog signal. Basically, we amplify the signal. Or limit it to protect
the next stages.
 The anti-aliasing filter is an essential step in the conversion of analog to a digital signal. It is a
low-pass filter. Meaning, it allows frequencies up to a certain threshold to pass. It attenuates
all frequencies above this threshold. These unwanted frequencies make it difficult to sample
an analog signal.
 The next stage is a simple analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This unit takes in analog signals
and outputs a stream of binary digits.
 The heart of the system is the digital signal processor. These days we use CMOS chips (even
ULSI) to make digital signal processors. In fact, modern processors, like the Cortex M4 have
DSP units built inside the SoC. These processor units have high-speed, high data throughputs,
and dedicated instruction sets.
 The next stages are sort of the opposite of the stages preceding the digital signal processor.
 The digital-to-analog converter does what its name implies. It’s necessary for the slew rate of
the DAC to match the acquisition rate of the ADC.
 The smoothing filter is another low-pass filter that smoothes the output by removing
unwanted high-frequency components.
 The last op-amp is just an amplifier.
 The output transducer is a speaker in our case. You can use anything else according to your
requirements.
 ADC Basic

How ADCs Work

In the real world, analog signals are signals that have a continuous
sequence with continuous values (there are some cases where it can
be finite). These types of signals can come from sound, light,
temperature and motion. Digital signals are represented by a
sequence of discrete values where the signal is broken down into
sequences that depend on the time series or sampling rate (more on
this later). The easiest way to explain this it through a visual! Figure 1
shows a great example of what analog and digital signals look like.

Figure 1: A continuous signal (analog) turning into a digital signal. (Source: Waqas Akram – Quantization in
ADCs)
An Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) takes an analog input signal and converts the input, through a mathematical
function, into a digital output signal. While there are many ways of implementing an ADC, there are three conceptual
steps that occur:

1. The anti-aliasing filter blocks unwanted frequencies.

2. The signal is sampled.(values of signal is extracted at different time instances )
3. The sampled signal is quantized.
4. The quantized signal is digitally coded.

Analog To Digital Conversion Steps

The conversion from analog signal to a digital signal in an analog to digital converter is explained below
using the block diagram given above.
Sample
The sample block function is to sample the input analog signal at a specific time interval. The samples are
taken in continuous amplitude & possess real value but they are discrete with respect to time.
The sampling frequency plays important role in the conversion. So it is maintained at a specific rate. The
sampling rate is set according to the requirement of the system.
Hold
The second block used in ADC is the ‘Hold’ block. It has no function. It only holds the sample amplitude
until the next sample is taken. The hold value remains unchanged till the next sample.
Quantize
This block is used for quantization. It converts the analog or continuous amplitude into discrete amplitude.
The on hold continuous amplitude value in hold block goes through ‘quantize’ block &
becomes discrete in amplitude. The signal is now in digital form as it has discrete time & discrete
amplitude.

Encoder
The encoder block converts the digital signal into binary form i.e. into bits.
As we know that the digital devices operate on binary signals so it is necessary to convert the digital signal
into the binary form using the Encoder.
This is the whole process of converting an Analog signal into digital form using an  Analog to Digital
Converter. This whole conversion occurs in a microsecond.