Paper Name: Digital Control System

Paper Code: PE EE 601A

Soumyadip Jana,
Assistant Professor,
Department of Electrical Engineering, TMSL
 An analog signal y(t) is continuous in time and continuous in
magnitude.
 Such type of signals can’t be stored in digital computers.
 Therefore the signal must be converted in such a way so that it
will be accepted by digital computers.
 The device that converts an analog signal into a digital one is
known as A/D converter.
 The common method is to record sample values of the
signal at equally spaced instants.

 Fig. (a) shows an analog signal which is continuous in time

and continuous in magnitude.

 Fig. (b) shows a discrete time signal where the time axis is
labeled simply ‘sample number’ and k (= 0,1,2,……) defines
the sample number.

 Hence after sampling signal becomes discrete in time but

continuous in magnitude.
Fig. (a) Fig. (b)
 After sampling the sample values are however tied to a
continuous range of numbers.

 Such a signal can be stored in an infinite-bit machine

because a finite-bit machine can store only a finite set of
numbers.

 A simplified hypothetical 2-bit machine can store four

numbers given alongside. The signal of Fig. (c) can be
stored in such a machine if the sample values are
quantified to four quantization levels.

 Hence after quantization, signal becomes discrete in time

and discrete in magnitude.
 Fig. (c) Fig. (d)
After quantization, the quantized sample value is encoded
into a digital word [Fig. (d)] which will be acceptable to
digital computers.
 The D/A conversion is a process of producing an analog
signal from a digital signal.

 The D/A converter performs two functions:

1. Generation of output samples from the binary
numbers.
2. Conversion of these samples to analog form.
 The decoder maps each digital word into a sample value of the
signal in discrete time form.
 Then the sample sequence is converted into a continuous time
signal just by holding the value of the last sample until the next
sample arrives. This function is referred to as zero-order hold
(ZOH) operation.