Digital technologies ( English Digital technology ) are based on the presentation of signals by discrete bands of analog levels , and not in the form of a continuous spectrum. All levels within a band represent the same signal state.
Digital technology works, in contrast to analog, with discrete rather than continuous signals. In addition, signals have a small set of values, as a rule, two, but in real life of the system, especially accounting data storage systems, based on three values. These are usually 0, 1, NULL, which in Boolean algebra have the values “False”, “True” and in the presence of NULL “no result”, respectively.
Digital circuits consist mainly of logical elements such as AND, OR, NOT, etc., and can also be interconnected by counters and triggers .
Digital technologies are mainly used in computing digital electronics, primarily computers, in various fields of electrical engineering, such as gaming machines, robotics, automation, instrumentation, radio and telecommunications devices, and many other digital devices .
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Content
Origin of title
The English word digital , meaning “digital,” in turn, comes from the Latin Digitus , that is, “finger.”
Since humankind used fingers for a long time in the process of calculating small values, it was the decimal number system that became the main one, including in the Indo-Arabic numbering. Usually, you can count only integers with your fingers. Because of this, the word “digital” is also used to mean any object that works with discrete values.
Benefits
One of the advantages of digital circuits compared to analog [1] is that, first, signals can be transmitted without distortion. For example, a continuous audio signal transmitted as a sequence of 1 and 0 can be recovered without error, provided that the transmission noise was not enough to prevent identification of 1 and 0. An hour of music can be saved on a CD using about 6 billion binary digits.
Computer-controlled digital systems can be controlled by software, adding new features without replacing hardware. Often this can be done without the participation of the manufacturer through a simple software update. This feature allows you to quickly adapt to changing requirements. In addition, it is possible to use complex algorithms that are impossible or feasible in analog systems, but only with very high costs.
Storing information in digital systems is easier than in analog systems. The noise immunity of digital systems allows you to store and retrieve data without damage. In an analog system, aging and wear can degrade recorded information. In digital mode, as long as the total interference does not exceed a certain level, information can be recovered absolutely exactly.
Disadvantages
In some cases, digital circuits use more energy than analog ones to perform the same task, emitting more heat, which increases the complexity of the circuits, for example, by adding a cooler . This may limit their use in portable battery-powered devices.
For example, cell phones often use a low-power analog interface to amplify and tune radio signals from a base station. However, the base station can use an energy-intensive, but very flexible software-defined radio system . Such base stations can be easily reprogrammed to process signals used in new cellular standards.
Information loss is also possible when converting an analog signal to a digital one. Mathematically, this phenomenon can be described as a rounding error .
In some systems, the loss of or damage to one piece of digital data can completely change the meaning of large blocks of data.
Notes
- ↑ Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, The Art of Electronics 2nd Ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1989 ISBN 0-521-37095-7 page 471
Literature
- Manfred Spitzer. Anti-brain: digital technology and the brain. - AST, 2015. - ISBN 978-5-457-51598-7 .
Links
- Lessons in Electric Circuits - Volume IV (Digital)
- MIT OpenCourse Ware for Digital Design Class Materials ("6.004: Computation Structures")
- DIY-Digital Experiments!
- Digital Logic Simulator v0.4 - Brad-Ware Studios' gates.
- CEDAR Logic Simulator - Free Digital Logic Simulation CAD Tool
- LogicCircuit - is a free educational software for designing and simulating digital logic circuits.
- Logisim is an educational tool for digital circuits.