I'm trying to create a quantising circuit to quantise a signal at 1 volt steps. The input is a +/-4V analog signal - the signal is quantised in steps of 1 volt, giving 9 possible output conditions. Normally the output condition for -4V is set, and is "overridden" by anything higher. You can select to disable certain some of the steps if you want to, for example i can disable the steps at 1 and 2 volts, and the output will change at 0v but not again until the input reaches 3V. I decided to implement this with analog, given that im more comfortable with components than microprocessors
Im trying to think of the neatest, cheapest and smallest way of selecting which output state is in operation. Logic to drive the all the inputs low seems to get a bit messy when I consider the chip packages available. I thought of using an encoder and multiplexer, but since some of the states are not always on i can't count sequentially which makes the implementation a bit more messy. I was thinking maybe there is a more clever way to do it - something like a multiplexer but with 9 inputs, the higher of which has priority over the others - 2 has priority over 1, 3 over 2 and 1 etc all the way up to 9 which has priority over all of them - only the highest input is ever "active"
does this type of circuit have a name? How can i achieve this?
Im trying to think of the neatest, cheapest and smallest way of selecting which output state is in operation. Logic to drive the all the inputs low seems to get a bit messy when I consider the chip packages available. I thought of using an encoder and multiplexer, but since some of the states are not always on i can't count sequentially which makes the implementation a bit more messy. I was thinking maybe there is a more clever way to do it - something like a multiplexer but with 9 inputs, the higher of which has priority over the others - 2 has priority over 1, 3 over 2 and 1 etc all the way up to 9 which has priority over all of them - only the highest input is ever "active"
does this type of circuit have a name? How can i achieve this?