{"id":16,"date":"2008-06-16T03:08:54","date_gmt":"2008-06-16T12:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/?p=16"},"modified":"2020-11-01T16:36:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T22:36:59","slug":"analog-vs-digital-part-1-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/2008\/06\/analog-vs-digital-part-1-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Analog vs Digital \u2013 Part 1: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The last 20 years have greatly improved the feature set and portability of electronics and anything which does or can contain electronics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nonetheless, most people don&#8217;t know what the word <em>digital<\/em> means. In this multi-part series, I will explain the difference between digital and analog, why digital processing is better than analog, and why some analog processing will never go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The words <em>analog<\/em> and <em>digital<\/em> are both adjectives. What types of nouns do they generally modify?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>signals<br \/>gadgets<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>A <em>signal<\/em> is anything that has a numeric value that varies with time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, for example, naturally occurring things such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>temperature<br \/>volume<br \/>pressure<br \/>voltage<br \/>current<br \/>force \/ torque<br \/>distance\/speed\/acceleration<br \/>angle\/angular speed\/angular acceleration<br \/>light intensity<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>are all signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each of these things varies with time. For example, the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.weather.com\/weather\/wxclimatology\/monthly\/graph\/USIL0028\" target=\"_blank\">temperature measured at Chicago O&#8217;Hare airport<\/a> varies both with the hour of the day and with the day of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, several artificial constructions are also signals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>stock prices<br \/>votes (per hour) in an election<br \/>traffic rates on the Internet<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Gadgets are what you think they are: electronic devices, but also appliances, machines, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Examples of gadgets are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>watches<br \/>thermometers<br \/>telephones<br \/>audio recorder\/players<br \/>video recorder\/players<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Engineers and mathematicians refer to gadgets (or their component building-blocks) as <em>systems<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It should be noted that a gadget being analog or digital comes down to whether it processes analog signals or digital signals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the next post, I&#8217;ll explain the characteristics of analog signals and gadgets. In a future post, I will explain characteristics of digital signals and gadgets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last 20 years have greatly improved the feature set and portability of electronics and anything which does or can contain electronics. Nonetheless, most people don&#8217;t know what the word digital means. In this multi-part series, I will explain the difference between digital and analog, why digital processing is better than analog, and why some [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,11,13,7,12,10,9,8],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-layperson","tag-analog","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-circuits","tag-digital","tag-digital-vs-analog","tag-gadget","tag-signal","tag-system"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/poCEy-g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.circuitdesign.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}