Analog‐to‐Digital Conversion (ADC) and Digital‐to‐Analog Conversion (DAC)

This chapter describes the principle of analog‐to‐digital conversion (ADC) and digital‐to‐analog conversion (DAC) and their applications in modern communications. It discusses the need for ADC and DAC and presents several practical examples of equipment that cannot operate without ADC and DAC systems. Since an ADC operation deals with decimal and binary numbers, the chapter reviews the difference between coding decimal numbers into binary and converting decimal numbers into binary. It describes how other digital communications technologies, such as pulse‐amplitude modulation and pulse‐code modulation, are built on the principles employed in ADC and DAC. Digital transmission can be done in different modes or techniques. It can be simplex, half duplex and full duplex, serial and parallel, synchronous and asynchronous, and it can be done in variouscombinations of these techniques. The chapter introduces the basics of these techniques.