What is Digital Electronics?
A field of electronics that deals with the study of digital signals as well as the devices using which digital signals are generated is referred to as Digital Electronics. One of the crucial components of digital electronics circuits is logic gates.
Digital electronics is originated from the word digitization, which corresponds to a process of changing continuous analog signals into finite discrete steps. So, basically, the signal obtained after digitization is digital in nature that can carry information from one end to another efficiently.
What is a Digital System?
Today’s world is very much centered around digital systems that it is not wrong to say this era is the digital age. The digital systems have shown tremendous usage in fields as such communication, spacecraft, traffic control, medical treatment, weather monitoring, etc. With technological advancement, we have made up to digital telephones, digital cameras, digital measuring devices, digital computers, as well as various handheld devices.
The signal is generally used in order to represent various discrete information within any system through physical quantities.
In general, a system is classified as either analog or digital. An analog system is one that uses a continuous type of variation with respect to time in order to represent any information. Such a signal is known as an analog signal. While when we talk about a digital system then in it any information is represented in the form of a discrete set of values. Such a representation of the signal is referred to as a digital signal.
We are aware of the fact that at present time, all electronic digital systems operate on two discrete values i.e., 0 and 1, thus is said to be binary in nature. A single binary digit is called a bit and in order to represent discrete information, a combination of binary digits (bits) is used which is referred to as binary codes.
Number System is a crucial part of Digital Electronics as it tells us about how information can be represented in various formats. However, other than this, logic gates, counters, decoders, multiplexers, flip flops are known to be components of digital circuits that are very much important as well.
Components of Digital Circuits
Let us now proceed to have a brief idea about some major components that constitute any digital circuits.
- Integrated Circuits: It is generally abbreviated as IC which is composed of semiconductor material and exists in the form of a chip that holds various digital elements. Generally, it contains logic gates and has several numbers of pins.
- Logic gates: There are various logic gates that are used to perform logical operations such as AND, OR, NAND, NOT, XOR, etc.
- Encoders and Decoders: These are combinational digital circuits. Encoder and Decoder perform reverse operations of each other. An encoder is designed to convert 2n coded input into n coded output. Whereas a decoder is the one that changes n coded inputs into 2n coded outputs.
- Counters: As the name indicate it is somewhat associated with the count. A counter is a digital device that stores and displays the number of discrete occurrences of a specific event or process with respect to the clock signal. It can be asynchronous or synchronous in nature.
- Flip-Flops: A flip-flop is a digital electronic circuit that contains two stable states in order to store binary data. The data stored within the flip-flops show variation by varying the applied input to it.
- Multiplexers and Demultiplexers: These are often abbreviated as MUX and DEMUX and both are designed to perform a reverse operation of each other. A multiplexer is a device that changes multiple line input signal into a single line output signal and is sometimes referred to as a data selector. A demultiplexer is a device that is designed to change a single input signal into multiple output signals and behaves as a data distributor.
Hence, we can say that digital electronics has turned out to be a crucial part of our lives due to the various advantages it offers to the world. Some of the advantageous factors include a simple form of information storage, accurate and precise form of data, easy system design, and programmability.
However, as every coin has two sides the same is the case with this also as some disadvantages are also associated with digital systems that include its high designing cost and as most of the real world is built on analog format thus conversion of analog into digital is necessary.
