CHAPTER THREE

Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Outline:
• Introduction
• Deflection bridge
• Filter
• Amplifiers
• Converter & Interfacing circuits
o A/D convertor
o D/A convertor

Course Instructor: Tamiru Getahun G. (Lecturer @ASTU, EPCE)

Email:[email protected]/[email protected]
ASTU
Dec. 18 , 2022
 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Signal conditioning
3.1 Introduction
• The output of sensors is usually small or not suitable to directly
process or present it.
• Signal conditioners are circuit that takes the output of a sensor
or transducer and converts it in to a form more suitable for
further processing or presenting.
• Some of the very commonly used type of signal conditioning
and interfacing circuits are;
o Deflection bridge
o Filters,
o Amplifier(OPAMP),
o V/I, I/V, V/F, F/V , ADC and DAC
o Protection (Zener & photo isolation),
o Linearization and error compensation
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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

3.2 Deflection Bridge

• Bridge circuits are used very commonly as a variable conversion
element in measurement systems and produce an output in the
form of a voltage level that changes as the measured physical
quantity changes.
• The Deflection Bridge finds an extensive application in electrical
instrumentation for conditioning the output of sensors typically if
the sensor output is variation of resistance, inductance and
capacitance.
• The deflection bridge has four arms of impedance designated as ZA,
ZB, ZN and ZX .
• ZX is the unknown impedance that usually forms the sensor as
shown in Figure below.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Deflection Bridge circuit

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Types of Deflection Bridge
• Deflection brides are classified depending up on:
I. Energy source as DC or AC bridges

II. Sensors present on the bridge arm as

• Quarter,
• Half and
• Full Deflection Bridge

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

DC Bridge
Null -type D.C bridge (Wheatstone Bridge)
• The bridge consists of four resistive arms together with a source of
Voltage and null detector (Galvanometer).
Balanced condition, IBD = 0
• When the bridge is balanced, the galvanometer
carries zero current and it does not show any
deflection.
• Under this condition VAD = VAB and VBD = 0

I1R1 = I2R2 (1)

I3R3 = I4R4 (2)

𝑹𝟏 𝑹𝟐
= 𝒐𝒓
Since VDC = VBC, I1 = I3 and I2 = I4 𝑹𝟑 𝑹𝟒
𝑹𝟐
Dividing equation (1) by equation (2) 𝑹𝟒 = 𝑹𝒙 = 𝑹𝟑( )
𝑹𝟏
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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• Exercise: A Wheatstone bridge has a ratio arm of 1/100

(R2/R1).At first balance, R3 is adjusted to 1000.3 ꭥ. The value of Rx
is then changed by the temperature change, the new value of R3 to
achieve the balance condition again is 1002.1 ꭥ. Find the change of
Rx due to the temperature change.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• Deflection-type D.C bridge (Off balance, VCD ≠ 0)

• Using Thévenin circuit reducing method, thevenin resistance,

galvanometer current and galvanometer resistance could be
calculated as follows.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Exercise:
1. A Wheatstone bridge with values of the bridge elements R1
=100ꭥ, R2 = 1000ꭥ, R3=200ꭥ and R4 = 2005ꭥ. The battery
voltage is 5V and its internal resistance negligible. The
galvanometer has a current sensitivity of 10mm/μA and an
internal resistance of 100ꭥ. Calculate the deflection of the
galvanometer caused by the 5ꭥ unbalance in arm RX .
2. A highly sensitive galavanometer can detect a current of
1mA.this is used in wheatstone bridge with each arm
resistance of 1000ꭥ. If the battery voltage is 20V calculate
the smallest change in resistance which can be detected by
the galvanometer. Assume the resistance of galvanometer is
neglected.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

𝑰𝒔 =ϴ/I= NBA/C

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

AC Bridge
Balance Condition:

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Comparison Bridge: Capacitance

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Comparison Bridge: Inductance

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Maxwell Bridge

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Hay Bridge

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Schering Bridge

(Deception factor)

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Wien Bridge

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Wagner Ground Connection

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Exercise:
1. The AC bridge consists of the following constants.
• Arm AB : R=400ꭥ
• Arm BC : R=150 ꭥ in series with C=0.2μF
• Arm CD : unknown
• Arm DA : R = 100ꭥ in series with L = 10 mH.
And the source oscillator frequency is 1 KHz. determine the
constants of the arm CD.
2. A capacitive comparison bridge is used to measure the capacitive
impedance at a frequency of 3 kHz. The bridge constants at bridge
balance are, C3=10μF, R1=1.2Kꭥ, R2=100Kꭥ and R3 = 120Kꭥ.
Find the equivalent series circuit of the unknown impedance.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

3.3 Filter
• Sensors in instrumentation systems usually emit analog signals that
must be conditioned before they are digitized.
• Analog filtering, which is indispensable in an electronic
conditioning device, has two principal functions:
– improving the signal-to-noise ratio;
– eliminating any frequencies that might be aliased by
sampling that precedes digital processing.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• Analog filters are also used in the output stages of

instrumentation systems when it is necessary to reconstruct an
analog signal from the conversion of a digital signal.
• The role of a filter is to separate the useful frequencies in a signal
(those that carry information) from unwanted frequencies, such as
noise or other signals.
Analogue signal filtering:
• Signal filtering consists of processing a signal to remove a
certain band of frequencies within it.
• The band of frequencies removed can be either
– At low-frequency end of the frequency spectrum(High-pass
filters),
– At the high-frequency end (low-pass filters),
– At both ends (band-pass filters), or
– In the middle of the spectrum (band-stop filters).
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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
• Outputs from ideal filters

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• Outputs from practical constant-k filters.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Filter Design and Analysis

Active filters
• In electric circuits, it is possible to attenuate or reduce/eliminate the
amplitude of unwanted frequencies caused by electric noise or other forms
of interference.

low-pass active filter

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

We now analyze the filter as follows:

The gain of this filter is given by:

where

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Under the last condition, the filter rolls off and

The rate of attenuation = (order of filter) X (20 dB/decade)

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

high-pass active filter

We now analyze the filter as follows:

The gain of this filter is given by:

where

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Band-pass active filter

We analyze the circuit as follows:

The gain of this filter is given by:

where

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Amplifier
• An Amplifier is an electronic device or group of devices used to
increase the size of a voltage or current signal without changing
the signals basic characteristics.

Operational amplifier (OPAMP)

• It’s a DC-coupled high gain electronic voltage amplifier with different input.
• Operational amplifiers (OPAMPs) are special types of amplifiers which
essential component of both practical and precision instruments.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Cont.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Common Used OPAMP circuit

• Voltage comparator • Current to voltage converter
• Inverting amplifier • Voltage to current converter
• Non inverting amplifier • Voltage to frequency
• Summing amplifier converter
• Voltage follower • Frequency to voltage
• Differential amplifier converter
• Integrating amplifier
• Differentiating amplifier

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Instrumentation Amplifier (INA)

• It’s a type of differential amplifier that has been outfitted with input buffer
amplifier.
• An instrumentation amplifier (INA) is specially designed amplifier to have:
– Finite differential gain and zero common mode gain
– High input impedance and high CMRR ratio.
• It’s used to provide large amount of gain for very low level signal, often in the
presence of high noise levels.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• The output voltage can be easily found by analyzing

the circuit as shown in:

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• The purpose of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is

to generate a train of pulses proportional to the analog
input.
• Digital-to-analog converter, or DAC, performs the
conversion of digital signal in to analog electrical
signal such as voltage output.
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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)
What is ADC ?
• An electronic integrated circuit which transforms a signal from
analog (continuous) to digital (discrete) form.
Why ADC is needed?
• Microprocessors can only perform complex processing on digitized
signals.
• When signals are in digital form they are less susceptible to the
deleterious effects of additive noise..
• ADC Provides a link between the analog world of transducers and
the digital world of signal processing and data handling.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• There are so many types of ADC used for conversion

processes
1. Flash or parallel ADC
2. Counter ADC
a) Digital ramp or stair step-ramp ADC

b) Successive approximation ADC

c) Tracking ADC
3. Slope integrating ADC
a) single slope integrating ADC
b) dual slope integrating ADC

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Flash ADC
• Flash Type ADC is based on the principle of comparing analog
input voltage with a set of reference voltages.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
• The operation is simple that analog input signal is compared with a
reference voltage by the comparator.
• The result is encoded by the priority encoder, which produces
digital outputs are attained.
• The flash ADC comprises of 2n − 1 comparators and 2n resistance
for N bit binary outputs.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Counter ADC:
• The counter type ADC is constructed using a binary counter, DAC and a
comparator.
• The output voltage of a DAC is VD which is equivalent to corresponding
digital input to DAC.
• The following figure shows the n-bit counter type ADC.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

I. Digital ramp ADC

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Operation:
• The operation is by means of the counter connected to DAC.
• It produces analog signal that can be compared with analog signal
to be digitized.

• when they become equal, the counter will stop counting and its
current binary output is the digitized form of the analog signal.
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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Cont…
• The counting stops at the instance VA< VD, and
at that instant the counter stops its progress and
the conversion is said to be complete.
• The numbers stored in the n-bit counter is the
equivalent n-bit digital data for the given analog
input voltage.
Advantages:
• Simple construction.
• Easy to design and less expensive.
• Speed can be adjusted by adjusting the clock
frequency.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
II. Successive approximation ADC
• Successive Approximation type ADC is the most widely used and popular ADC
method.
• Successive Approximation method uses very efficient code searching strategy
called binary search.
• It completes searching process for n-bit conversion in just n clock periods.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
III. Tracking ADC
• A third variation on the counter-DAC-based converter theme is
the tracking ADC which instead of a regular "up" counter
driving the DAC, the circuit uses an up/down counter.
• The counter is continuously clocked, and the up/down control
line is driven by the output of the comparator. So,
• When the analog input signal exceeds the DAC output, the
counter goes into the "count up" mode.
• When the DAC output exceeds the analog input, the counter
switches into the "count down" mode.
• Either way, the DAC output always counts in the proper
direction to track the input signal.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

• An advantage of this converter circuit is speed, since the counter never has to reset.
• Drawback to this ADC design is the fact that the binary output is never stable(bit
bobble)
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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
Digital to Analog Conversion (DAC)
a) A Resistor-string DAC

𝑵−𝟏
𝒃𝒊
𝑽𝒐 = 𝑽𝒓𝒆𝒇 ෍ 𝒊+𝟏
𝟐
𝒊=𝟎

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

b)The R/2nR DAC (binary-weighted-input DAC)

• It is an inverting summer op-amp circuit which have the
input resistor values set at multiple powers of two: R, 2R,
and 4R. . . .2nR and supplied by voltages V,

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Each input voltage has exactly half the effect on the output as the
voltage before it.

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Example: For a reference voltage of 5v and 3 bit binary

inputs. Determine the analog output voltages. Assume
Rf and R are equal in magnitude.
solution:

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits
(b) The R/2R DAC
• A disadvantage of the former DAC design was:
• Its requirement of several different precise input resistor values,
one unique value per binary input bit.
• However in “ladder” type of DAC we require only two resistor
values of R and 2R as shown

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 Signal conditioning and Interfacing circuits

Solution

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 Thank You For Your Attention!
Questions?

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 Assignment # 3
1) Determine the analog voltage of a 4 bit binary weighted DAC if
the reference voltage is 5v, and having feedback resistor value
of 800ꭥ and the input resistance R=1 kꭥ .
2) Design a 4 bit flash ADC having a reference voltage of 16v.
And determine the output binary digital outputs for each stage
of analog input. How much is the resolution?
3) Discuss in detail the working principle of single slope
integrating ADC and dual slope integrating ADC using their
circuit diagram.
4) Rank the ADC , Single-slope integrating, dual-slope integrating,
counter, tracking, successive approximation, flash from best to
worst in terms of
• Resolution/complexity ratio:
• Speed and Step recovery