15.1 INTRODUCTION
In previous chapters, we dealt with various electronic devices (diode, BJT, FET, etc.) that have been used to design various electronic circuits like rectifier, various kind of amplifiers, oscillators, etc. For all these electronic circuits, the input and or output signals can take any value within a practical range; such signals are known as ‘analog’ signal. Electronic circuits and systems dealing with such analog signals are commonly known as analog circuits. Even though all practical signals are analog in nature, various practical applications and processing of these analog signal require certain sort of quantization and discretization. For instance, while measuring voltage/current using an analog meter, we rely on the deflection of the needle on a properly calibrated scale. Using such analog meter, we can measure any practical voltage/current. On the other hand, while measuring same voltage or current using a digits meter we can get only certain discrete values based on the number of digits in the display panel. However, if adequate numbers of display digits are used, it will provide very accurate result!
In this chapter, we will introduce the basic concepts and circuits dealing with digital signal, a signal that can take only a finite number of values.
Figure 15.1(a) and (b) show an analog and digital signal plotted against time(t). As discussed previously, analog signal can take any value within a range, while for a digital signal only a few restricted ranges of amplitudes are allowed. The most common digital signals are binary signal that takes amplitude either high (represented as ‘1’) or low (represented as ‘0’). The circuit that deals with digital signals is commonly known as digital circuit. Most of the modern electronic systems like computer, memory circuits, microprocessors and various electronic gadgets like cell phone, iPad, laptop, etc. are high-end examples of digital circuits.
The objective of this chapter is to learn the features and operations of fundamental digital logic circuits, which are the backbone of the modern digital computers.
15.2 DIFFERENT NUMBER SYSTEMS
To have a clear idea on how arithmetic and logical operations are executed in digital systems, we need to be familiar with various schemes of representation of number in digital systems. From our childhood and school days, we have been familiar with decimal number system, which consists of 10 digits, ranging from 0 to 9.