A signal reconstruction method that predicts the voltage between two sampled data points by drawing a straight line based on the current and previous sample values. In digital-to-analog converters, it provides a smoother output waveform than a zero-order hold, which simply holds the voltage flat until the next sample. It introduces a one-sample delay and requires an analog integrator circuit to implement in hardware.
We switched from a zero-order to a first-order hold on the DAC output to reduce the high-frequency quantization noise.
Related terms
Digital-to-analog converter
A mixed-signal component that translates binary data into a continuous physical voltage or current.
DAC
A digital-to-analog converter transforms discrete binary numbers into a continuous physical voltage or current.
Quantize
The process of mapping a continuous range of analog signal values to a finite set of discrete digital levels.