Hello.

Anybody care to help me understand resistor ladder networks?

From what my professor said, they are used to help convert analog signals to digital ones...

The class I am taking is an introductory DC Circuits course. I don't know what this has to do with what we are seeing in class. I'm also not sure if this has to do with what we are seeing next, the wheatstone bridge.

Thanks!

 

The section in our Ebook that discusses analog to digital conversion should give you that information - http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_4/chpt_13/1.html

 

Thanks, but I can't get much out of that because we haven't seen anything digital and won't in this course.

I'm just a little confused, I don't see how this would tie in to what we've been learning so far in the course.

 

I can't answer that specifically, but the analog section of the A to D convertor is going to be, well, analog. The errors in the values for the resistors will translate directly into the numbers. Just a guess.

There are quite a few methods for converstion, all have advantages and disadvantages, but the error translation (such as percentages of resistors) still apply. Many cases it doesn't matter how accurate the resistors are, but how close in value to each other.

 

If you scroll down to near the end of this datasheet you will see pretty good explanation of R2R ladder.

hgmjr