Towards a reliable approach on scaling in data acquisition

Abstract: Data acquisition is an important process in the functioning of any control system. Usually, the acquired signal is analogic, representing a continuous physical measure, and it should be processed in a digital system based on an analog to digital converter (ADC) and a microcontroller. The ADC provides the converted value in ADC units, but the system and its operator need the value expressed in physical units. In this paper we propose a novel design solution for the scaling module, which is a key component of a digital measurement system. The scaling module refers to fitting the sensor result of a variable number of bits depending on the ADC resolution into physical units. A general method for scaling is proposed and a SageMath script is presented for obtaining easily the scaling function. In the last part of the paper, the proposed method is validated in a case study, by calculus, and it is implemented on a low-cost development system in order to create a wireless sensor node.