CSE190 Winter 2019

Lecture 8
Interfacing with
The Analog World
Wireless Embedded Systems
Aaron Schulman
 Outline
• Sampling

• ADC

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 We live in an analog world
• Everything in the physical world is an analog signal
– Sound, light, temperature, pressure
• Need to convert into electrical signals
– Transducers: converts one type of energy to another
• Electro-mechanical, Photonic, Electrical, …
– Examples
• Microphone/speaker
• Thermocouples
• Accelerometers

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 Going from analog to digital

• What we want…
Physical Engineering
Phenomena Units
• How we get there?

Physical Voltage or ADC Counts Engineering

Phenomena Current Units

Sensor ADC Software

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 Representing an analog signal digitally
• How do we represent an analog signal (e.g. continuous voltage)?
– As a time series of discrete values
 On MCU: read ADC data register (counts) periodically (Ts)

f (x) Counts
Voltage (discrete)
(continuous)

f sampled (x)
t
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TS
 Choosing the range
• Fixed # of bits (e.g. 8-bit ADC)
• Span a particular input voltage range
• What do the sample values represent?
– Some fraction within the range of values
 What range to use?

Vr  Vr 

Vr  Vr 

t t
Range Too Small Range Too Big

Vr 

Vr 
t
Ideal Range
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 Choosing the granularity

• Resolution
– Number of discrete values that
represent a range of analog values
– MSP430: 12-bit ADC
• 4096 values
• Range / 4096 = Step
Larger range  less info / bit

• Quantization Error
– How far off discrete value is from actual
– ½ LSB  Range / 8192
Larger range  larger error

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 Choosing the sample rate

• What sample rate do we need?

– Too little: we can’t reconstruct the signal we care about
– Too much: waste computation, energy, resources

f (x)

f sampled (x)
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t
 Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem

• If a continuous-time signal f (x) contains no frequencies higher than f max ,

it can be completely determined by discrete samples taken at a rate:

f samples  2 f max
• Example:
– Humans can process audio signals 20 Hz – 20 KHz
– Audio CDs: sampled at 44.1 KHz

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 Converting between voltages,
ADC counts, and engineering units
• Converting: ADC counts  Voltage
Vr 
Vin
N ADC
Vr 
t

• Converting: Voltage  Engineering Units

VTEMP  0.00355(TEMPC )  0.986
VTEMP  0.986
TEMPC 
0.00355

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 A note about sampling and arithmetic*
• Converting values in fixed-point MCUs
VTEMP  0.986
TEMPC 
0.00355

float vtemp = adccount/4095 * 1.5;

float tempc = (vtemp-0.986)/0.00355;
 vtemp = 0! Not what you intended, even when vtemp is a float!
 tempc = -277 C

• Fixed point operations

– Need to worry about underflow and overflow

• Floating point operations

– They can be costly on the node

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 Try it out for yourself…

$ cat arithmetic.c
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {

int adccount = 2048;

float vtemp;
float tempc;

vtemp = adccount/4095 * 1.5;

tempc = (vtemp-0.986)/0.00355;

printf("vtemp: %f\n", vtemp);

printf("tempc: %f\n", tempc);
}

$ gcc arithmetic.c

$ ./a.out
vtemp: 0.000000
tempc: -277.746490

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 Use anti-aliasing filters on ADC inputs to
ensure that Shannon-Nyquist is satisfied

• Aliasing
– Different frequencies are indistinguishable when they are sampled.

• Condition the input signal using a low-pass filter

– Removes high-frequency components
– (a.k.a. anti-aliasing filter)

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 Do I really need to condition my input
signal?
• Short answer: Yes.

• Longer answer: Yes, but sometimes it’s already

done for you.
– Many (most?) ADCs have a pretty good analog filter
built in.
– Those filters typically have a cut-off frequency just
above ½ their maximum sampling rate.
• Which is great if you are using the maximum sampling
rate, less useful if you are sampling at a slower rate.
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 Oversampling
• One interesting trick is that you can use
oversampling to help reduce the impact of
quantization error.
– Let’s look at an example of oversampling plus
dithering to get a 1-bit converter to do a much
better job…

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 Oversampling a 1-bit ADC w/ noise &
dithering (cont)
Voltage Count
uniformly “upper edge”
distributed of the box
random noise
±250 mV
1
Vthresh = 500 mV
N1 = 11
500 mV
375 mV
N0 = 32
500 mV
Vrand =

0 mV
Note:
N1 is the # of ADC counts that = 1 over the sampling window
N0 is the # of ADC counts that = 0 over the sampling window 16
 Oversampling a 1-bit ADC w/ noise &
dithering (cont)
• How to get more than 1-bit out of a 1-bit ADC?
• Add some noise to the input
• Do some math with the output
• Example
– 1-bit ADC with 500 mV threshold
– Vin = 375 mV  ADC count = 0
– Add ±250 mV uniformly distributed random noise
to Vin
– Now, roughly
• 25% of samples (N1) ≥ 500 mV  ADC count = 1
• 75% of samples (N0) < 500 mV  ADC count = 0 17
 Can use dithering to deal with quantization

• Dithering
– Quantization errors can result in
large-scale patterns that don’t
accurately describe the analog
signal
– Oversample and dither
– Introduce random (white) noise
to randomize the quantization
error.

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Direct Samples Dithered Samples
 Selection of ADC

• The parameters used in selecting an ADC are very

similar to those considered for a DAC selection
• Error/Accuracy: Quantizing error represents the
difference between an actual analog value and its
digital representation. Ideally, the quantizing error
should not be greater than ± 1⁄2 LSB.
• Resolution: DV to cause 1 bit change in output
• Output Voltage Range -> Input Voltage Range
• Output Settling Time -> Conversion Time
• Output Coding (usually binary)
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