Quantizer Dynamics and their Effect on the Performance of Digital Feedback Control Systems

We investigate in some specific cases the ramifications for the behavior of digital feedback control systems of the fact that many analog-to-digital converters have dynamics of their own. Even when a feedback system employs static A-to-D converters, its dynamics can be rather complicated due to an unstable open loop and the presence of hard nonlinearities in the controller. If the A-to-D converters in a system are dynamic converters such as oversampling delta-sigma modulators, the story is even more intriguing.