Signal Conditioning

#Definition In electronics, signal conditioning means manipulating an analog signal in such a way that it meets the requirements of the next stage for further processing.

#Input&Output ##Input Signal conditioning stage receives the output of sensor. Signal inputs from sensors include:

• DC Voltage
• DC Current
• AC Voltage
• AC Current
• Frequency
• Electric Charge

#Output

• voltage, current, frequency, timer or counter, relay, resistance or potentiometer, and other specialized outputs.

#Signal conditioning processes ##Filtering Filtering is the most common signal conditioning function, as usually not all the signal frequency spectrum contains valid data. The common example is 60 Hz AC power lines, present in most environments, which will produce noise if amplified.

##Amplifying Signal amplification performs two important functions:

1. increases the resolution of the input signal
2. increases its signal-to-noise ratio. For example, the output of an electronic temperature sensor, which is probably in the millivolts range is probably too low for an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to process directly.In this case it is necessary to bring the voltage level up to that required by the ADC. Commonly used amplifiers on signal on conditioning include sample and hold amplifiers, peak detectors, log amplifiers, antilog amplifiers, instrumentation amplifiers and programmable gain amplifiers.