Signal conditioners are data acquisitiondevices that are used to convert one type of electronic signal,typically analog, to another type of electronic signal, which is almostalways digital. Industrial manufacturing is one industry that employssignal conditioners for applications including industrial measurementon equipment such as scales and load cells.
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Signal conditioners are used to convert the data because digital data is required in order for the data to be uniformly presented and properly utilized by the computer through which the data will be both controlled and accessed. Mostly, this function provides the advantage of allowing signals that may be extremely difficult to read to be altered into a more easily readable format. In addition to this benefit, the conversion of the signal also allows for several other functions to take place including amplification, linearization, cold junction compensation, excitation and electrical insulation. In response to the wide range of functions that signal conditioners are capable of performing, there is a correspondingly broad spectrum of applications and industries that they are utilized in including: medical, for use in applications such as gas and infusion pumps for medical-grade oxygen, strain gauges, robotics and more; aerospace, in defense applications such as interfacing a strain gauge bridge; and marine, for use in the conversion of the water temperature and more to the data acquisition system.
There are many different styles of signal conditioners, some of the more common of which include DIN rail mount conditioners, backplane mount conditioners and digital signal conditioners. DIN is an acronym for the German Institute for Standardization, which in its native tongue is Deutsches Institut für Normung eV. A DIN rail mount conditioner is designed so that the conditioner is mounted onto a DIN rail bracket, which can be used to house a few or multiple signal conditioners. A backplane mount conditioner refers to the way in which the signal conditioner is mounted upon a common backplane, which is a type of printed circuit board that connects several connectors in parallel to each other, forming a computer bus. This style of signal conditioner is advantageous because all of the output signals are accessible by means of a single common connector and this type of conditioner is most frequently used in data acquisition systems. Finally, digital signal conditioners are a new development and thus, not as commonly used as the other two types of signal conditioners. Digital signal conditioners offer a multitude of advantages including easy connectivity to a computer, a high degree of immunity from electrical noise and the ability to support extended transmission distances.
