A data acquisition system may communicate via two common buses: the data bus and the control bus.

More Questions from Interfacing to the Analog World

• The output of an analog-to-digital converter is a voltage level.
• When the analog input to a tracking A/D converter is at a constant level, the digital output will oscillate.
• A DAC is monotonic if its output increases as its binary input is incremented from one value to the next.
• To be useful, A/D or D/A converters must have meaningful representation of the analog quantity and a digital representation and the digital quantity as an analog representation.
• When a DAC output shows a deviation of the measured step size from the ideal step size, this error is called nonlinearity.
• An eight-bit D/A converter has a resolution of 0.125.
• If the least significant bit (LSB) of a four-bit binary-weighted resistor D/A converter connects to a 200 Ω resistor, then the resistor needed for the next bit is 100 Ω.
• It is possible to develop more than 16 different analog levels using 4-bit resolution.
• Generally speaking, DACs with a current output will have a shorter settling time than those with voltage outputs.
• D/A conversion is the process of taking a voltage or current and converting it to a digital code.

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