A floating-point A/D converter uses low resolution DAC to get wide dynamic range

This paper describes the use of non-uniform quantizing step to realize a floating-point analogue-to-digital converter. This enables achieving wider dynamic range while using low resolution components. Main advantages of this realization are low cost, reduced hardware and better performance in terms of signal to quantizing error ratio. The main hardware components used are low resolution analogue-to-digital converter and programmable gain amplifier along with some logic elements. The algorithm can be easily implemented through software in a microprocessor-based system leading to further hardware saving.