Techniques to implement A/D converters using minimal hardware and software

Many products currently take advantage of microcontroller and are capable of creating an analogue - to - digital (A/D) converter with very little extra hardware or software. In effort to make the design more competitive, the typical successive approximation A/D converter (ADC), on board, can be replaced by several low - cost A/D PWM converter structure. The designer must first determine the true system requirements and then select an approach that best meets those requirements. Quite often when a discrete ADC is designed, tradeoffs must be made between parameters such as speed versus resolution and high accuracy versus low cost. Besides the actual input signal parameters (rate of change and range) and converter parameters (accuracy and resolution), other tasks that need to be performed by the microcontroller circuit (real -time monitoring /control) often play a major role in witch method is optimum.