Summary

Digital controllers makes use of a control program in a digital computer, digital signals to control the appliances and has many advantages in terms of flexibility, decision making ,cost, productivity and minimum energy usage. It finds usage in microwaves, sewing machines, robots and in control of some house hold appliances. Now a days digital controllers are being frequently used because of advantages over analog controllers and due to availability of low cost digital computers.

A continuous time signal is sampled to get a discrete time signal that can be quantized in amplitude in order to obtain the digital signal. Such a signal can be represented in binary form (zeros and ones).

Sampling process: This process is used when a digital controller is used in a control system. Sampling and quantizing the signal is compulsory to enter the data in a digital controller. The signal is sampled and quantized. During the quantization stage the analog amplitude is converted into digital amplitude

Block diagram of a digital control system

Explanation of blocks in digital control system Sampling: The process of transforming a continuous time signal into a discrete time signal is called sampling There are several types of sampling operations Periodic sampling: sampling of a signal at equal intervals of time Multiple order sampling: The pattern is repeated periodically Random sampling: sampling of a signal at random intervals of time Sample&hold circuit: the purpose of this circuit is to hold the amplitude of sampled waveform at a constant vale until the next sampling pulse A/D Convertor: it is used to convert a continuous time signal into a sequence of numerically binary words. This process of conversion is also called encoding

D/A convertor: it is used to convert a digital signal into a continuous time signal. This process of conversion is also called decoding Noise: disturbance which adds to the plant from outside environment surroundings Filter: This eliminates noise Transducer: converts the input signal of one form into output signal of other form. For example a pressure signal can be converted into a voltage signal Plant: A plant is a physical object that needs to be controlled .example: furnance, chemical reactor etc Actuator: its a motor which controls or runs the plant The output signal is a continuous time signal .The input signal is converted into a digital signal with the help of A/D , sample and hold circuit ,this conversion of analog signal to a digital signal is called encoding and the reverse process is called decoding . The clock controls the operation of the plant; here the plant is a physical object to be controlled. Digital controllers make use of analog to digital convertors, digital to analog convertors to control a plant of a control system

Quantization: The process of transforming analog signal into set of discrete states is called quantization When the value of sample falls between any output states it should be rounded off to the nearest state of the signal. The output state of each quantized sample is represented by a binary code (zeros and ones) which is known as coding. The quantization level Q is defined as the range between two adjacent points given by the formulae

Fsr: full scale range n: number of bits that a binary code can be represented with

A/d conversion involves quantization error and this error varies between 0 and 0.5.the error can be made small by making the quantization level small The quantization error e(t) is the difference between the input signal and quantized output signal e(t)=x(t)-y(t) The magnitude of the quantized error is x(t):analog signal y(t):discrete signal

For small quantization level q the nature of quantization error is similar to the of Random noise. This implies the process of quantization acts as source for noise. We can calculate the variance of quantization noise

Probability distribution p(e) of quantization error e(t)

Here quantization error is uniformly distributed between Q/2 and Q/2 and this error acts as a white noise. so variance is equal to

Hence the variance is equal to 1/12 square of the quantization level Q