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In electronics, a sample and hold (also known as sample and follow) circuit is an analog circuit that samples (captures, takes) the voltage of a continuously varying analog signal and holds (locks, freezes) its value at a constant level for a specified minimum period of time. Sample and hold circuits and related peak detectors are the elementary analog memory devices. They are typically used in analog-to-digital converters to eliminate variations in input signal that can corrupt the conversion process.Kefauver and Patschke, p. 37. They are also used in electronic music, for instance to impart a random quality to successively-played notes.
A typical sample and hold circuit stores electric charge in a capacitor and contains at least one switching device such as a FET (field effect transistor) switch and normally one operational amplifier.Horowitz and Hill, p. 220. To sample the input signal, the switch connects the capacitor to the output of a buffer amplifier. The buffer amplifier charges or discharges the capacitor so that the voltage across the capacitor is practically equal, or proportional to, input voltage. In hold mode, the switch disconnects the capacitor from the buffer. The capacitor is invariably discharged by its own leakage currents and useful load currents, which makes the circuit inherently volatile memory, but the loss of voltage ( voltage drop) within a specified hold time remains within an acceptable error margin for all but the most demanding applications.
For practically all commercial liquid crystal active matrix displays based on TN, IPS or VA electro-optic LC cells (excluding bi-stable phenomena), each pixel represents a small capacitor, which has to be periodically charged to a level corresponding to the greyscale value (contrast) desired for a picture element. In order to maintain the level during a scanning cycle (frame period), an additional electric capacitor is attached in parallel to each LC pixel to better hold the voltage. A thin-film FET switch is addressed to select a particular LC pixel and charge the picture information for it. In contrast to an S/H in general electronics, there is no output operational amplifier and no electrical signal AO. Instead, the charge on the hold capacitors controls the deformation of the LC molecules and thereby the optical effect as its output. The invention of this concept and its implementation in thin-film technology have been honored with the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal.
During a scanning cycle, the picture doesn't follow the input signal. This does not allow the eye to refresh and can lead to blurring during motion sequences, also the transition is visible between frames because the backlight is constantly illuminated, adding to display motion blur. Charles Poynton is an authority on artifacts related to HDTV, and discusses motion artifacts succinctly and specifically Eye-tracking based motion blur on LCD
Sample and hold circuits are also frequently found on synthesizer, either as a discrete module or as an integral component. They are used to take periodic samples of an incoming signal, typically as a source of modulation for other components of the synthesizer. When a sample and hold circuit is plugged into a white noise generator the result is a sequence of random values, which - depending on the amplitude of modulation - can be used to provide subtle variations in a signal or wildly varying random tones. Sound on Sound, August 2000: From Sample & Hold To Sample-rate Converters
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