Analog and Digital Circuits for Electronic Control System Applications

Analog system designers many times in the past avoided the use of electronics for their system functions
because electronic circuits could not provide the dynamic range of the signal without severe nonlinearity, or
because the circuits drifted or became unstable with temperature, or because the computations using analog
signals were quite inaccurate. As a result, the design shifted to other disciplines, for example, mechanical.
Today, young engineers requested by their superiors to design an analog control system, have an entirely
new technique available to them to help them design the system and overcome the “old” problems. The design technique is this: sense the analog signals and convert them to electrical signals; condition the signals
so they are in a range of inputs to assure accurate processing; convert the analog signals to digital; make the
necessary computations using the very high-speed IC digital processors available with their high accuracy;
convert the digital signals back to analog signals; and output the analog signals to perform the task at hand.
Analog and Digital Circuits for Control System Applications: Using the TI MSP430 Microcontroller explains
the functions that are in the signal chain, and explains how to design electronic circuits to perform the functions. Included in this book is a chapter on the different types of sensors and their outputs. There is a chapter
on the different techniques of conditioning the sensor signals, especially amplifiers and op amps. There are
techniques and circuits for analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversions, and an explanation of what a
digital processor is and how it works. There is a chapter on data transmissions and one on power control.
And to solidify the learning and applications, there is a chapter that explains assembly-language programming, and also a chapter where the reader actually builds a working project. These two chapters required
choosing a digital processor. The TI MSP430 microcontroller was chosen because of its design, and
because it is readily available, it is well supported with design and applications documentation, and it has
relatively inexpensive evaluation tools.
The goal of the book is to provide understanding and learning of the new design technique available to
analog system designers and the tools available to provide system solutions.