Signal Conditioning
Sensors can generate electrical signals to measure physical phenomena, such as temperature, force, sound, or light. To measure signals from transducers, you must convert them into a form that a DAQ device can accept. For example, the output voltage of most thermocouples is very small and susceptible to noise. Therefore, you may need to amplify or filter the thermocouple output before digitizing it.
The manipulation of signals to prepare them for digitizing is called signal conditioning. Common types of signal conditioning include the following: