Signal Conditioning & Data Acquisition

From millivolts to trustworthy digital data. Op-amps, active filters and instrumentation amplifiers, the 4–20 mA loop and HART, ADCs and DACs, sampling and aliasing, data acquisition systems, noise, grounding and shielding.

• Operational Amplifiers — The op-amp is the universal analog building block. Learn the ideal op-amp rules (virtual short), inverting, non-inverting, voltage follower, summing, difference, instrumentation, integrator and comparator circuits, plus real limitations: gain–bandwidth product, slew rate, offset, input bias current and rail-to-rail behaviour.
• Active Filters — Filters pass wanted frequencies and reject others. Learn low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and notch responses, passive RC/LC and active op-amp filters, filter order and roll-off, Butterworth, Chebyshev and Bessel approximations, Sallen–Key design, and anti-aliasing filters for ADCs.
• Signal Conditioning & 4–20 mA Transmission — Turning weak, noisy sensor signals into clean, standard ones. Learn amplification and the instrumentation amplifier (CMRR), excitation, bridge completion, filtering, linearisation, isolation, and the industrial 4–20 mA current loop (live zero, loop power budget, 2-wire/4-wire, NAMUR NE43 fault currents, scaling to engineering units), plus noise, grounding and shielding practice.
• ADC & DAC — Converters bridge analog and digital worlds. Learn resolution, LSB size, quantisation error and SNR, ADC types (flash, SAR, sigma-delta, pipelined), sampling rate, reference voltage, DAC types (R-2R, string, PWM), and key specs (INL, DNL, ENOB).
• Sampling & Aliasing — Sampling turns continuous signals into numbers. Learn the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, aliasing and how to calculate alias frequencies, anti-aliasing filters, reconstruction (zero-order hold, sinc interpolation), oversampling and decimation, undersampling (bandpass sampling), and quantisation.
• Data Acquisition Systems — From analog signals to trustworthy digital data. Learn DAQ architecture (multiplexer, PGA, sample-and-hold, ADC), resolution, LSB, quantisation noise, SNR and ENOB, sampling theorem, aliasing and anti-alias filters, multiplexed vs simultaneous sampling, single-ended vs differential inputs, triggering, buffering, timestamps, and data-logging practice — with Python for resolution, ENOB and aliasing.
• Instrumentation Systems — A complete measurement system: sensor, signal conditioning, instrumentation amplifier, filtering, ADC, processing, calibration and communication. Learn CMRR, anti-aliasing, resolution vs ENOB, uncertainty budgets and industrial DAQ architecture.