What Is a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC)?
A digital-to-analog converter (also known as a DAC or a D/A converter) is an electronic circuit that converts a digital representation of a quantity into a discrete analog value. The input to the DAC is typically a digital binary code, and this code, along with a known reference voltage, results in a voltage or current at the DAC output. The word “discrete” is very important to understand, because a DAC cannot provide a continuous time output signal; rather, it provides analog “steps.” The steps can be lowpass-filtered to obtain a continuous signal. By increasing the resolution of the DAC, the number of discrete steps is increased and the step size is reduced (which reduces the quantization error), resulting in a signal that closer approximates a continuous time signal.
