A/D converter
From Glossary of Meteorology
Abbreviation for analog-to-digital converter, an electronic device for quantifying a (typically) continuous-time voltage signal to a numeric discrete-sample sequence.
A/D converters are commonly used in imaging systems to convert pixel values to numeric equivalents, in radar systems to convert signal intensity to digital values for subsequent signal processing, and in many other areas of in situ and remote sensing. Important A/D converter characteristics include the number of unique quantization levels (expressed by the number of binary bits in the resulting numeric values) and the speed of quantization.
