Analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion system and echo

Abstract

A conversion system is disclosed for performing either an analog-to-digital A/D conversion associated with an amplification step or a digital-to-analog D/A conversion associated with an attenuation step. The system includes apparatus (115) for receiving a input digital word to be processed, i.e. converted into analog and then attenuated, and apparatus (165) for receiving a input analog value to be processed, i.e. amplified for scaling purposes and then converted into digital. It also includes a digital-to-analog D/A converter (110), an attenuator (120) for attenuating the analog output of D/A converter (110), and a comparator (150) for comparing the value of the input analog value to be processed and the output of said attenuator (120). The processing of the D/A-attenuation process is performed by both the D/A converter (110) and attenuator (120). In order to achieve the A/D-amplification process, the system further includes generator apparatus (140) for generating a sequence of digital words to the D/A converter (110), and storage apparatus (220) for storing among this sequence, the digital value that minimizes the difference between both input of comparator (150). This digital value is extracted as being the digital representation of the amplified analog input value. Since both A/D-amplification and D/A-attenuation processings involve the same physical components, both processing have transfer function exactly inverse of one another. The typical use of this circuit is in echo cancellation technique.