ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNALS Signal: Signal is defined as a function that conveys information, generally about the state

or behavior of a physical system. Eg: Speech as a function of time, Photographic image as brightness function of two spatial variables. There are two types of signal. Analog and Digital Following are the differences in between Analog and Digital Signals Analog Signal Signals that vary in continuous fashion and take an infinite number of values in any given range are called Analog signals. These are Continuous time signals. Shape of the signals is different. So, no common format. Less immunity to interference. Bandwidth of Channel=Bandwidth of Signal. System is simple. 6 Difficult to multiplex signals. Storage difficult and costly. Inflexible operation as compared to Digital operations. 7 8 9 Digital Signal Signals that vary in discrete steps and take only two possible values either 1 or 0 within any specified range are called Digital signals. These are Discrete time signals. Common format for the transmission of different kind of message signals (audio, video etc). High immunity to interference. Bandwidth of Channel > Bandwidth of Signal. Increased system complexity as every signal in nature is in analog form and has to be converted into digital using ADC converters. Easier and efficient to multiplex several digital signals. Storage relatively easier and inexpensive. Flexible operation of the system

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Disadvantages of Digital Signal: Increased functional Bandwidth and Increased system complexity. (All other points are advantages of digital signal over analog.) Importance of Digital Electronics: Because of the increasing use of digital computers in both data processing and automatic control system, digital electronics has a greater importance. Some of them are listed below: Used for wide variety of industrial and consumer products as in automated industrial machinery Computers used in different field Microprocessors Calculators Digital watches and clocks TV, games IC technology Electronic systems etc Application of Digital Signals: Digital Speech Processing Digital Image Processing

Consumer Electronics Communication field Engineering and Computer science

Analog to Digital Conversion: Most signals of practical interest, such as speech, biological signals, seismic signals, sonar signals and various communications signals such as audio and video signals, are analog. To process analog signals by digital means, it is first necessary to convert them into digital form, that is, to convert them to a sequence of numbers having finite precision. This procedure is called analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion, and the corresponding devices are called A/D converters (ADCs). Conceptually, we view A/D conversion as a three-step process. This process is illustrated in Fig. 1 1. Sampling: This is the conversion of a continuous-time signal into a discrete- time signal obtained by taking "samples" of the continuous-time signal at discrete-time instants. Thus, if Xa{t) is the input to the sampler, the output is Xa(nT) = x(n), where T is called the sampling interval.

2. Quantization: This is the conversion of a discrete-time continuous-valued signal into a discretetime, discrete-valued (digital) signal. The value of each signal sample is represented by a value selected from a finite set of possible values. The difference between the unquantized sample x(n) and the quantized output Xq(n) is called the quantization error. 3. Coding: In the coding process, each discrete value Xq(n) is represented by a b-bit binary sequence.

Analog to Digital Converter Xa(t ) Sampler

X( n)
Xq( n)

0101

Quantize r

Coder

Analog Signal

Discretetime Signal

Quantized Signal

Digital Signal

Fig.1 Basic Parts of Analog to Digital Converter In many cases of practical interest (e.g., speech processing) it is desirable to convert the processed digital signals into analog form. (Obviously, we cannot listen to the sequence of samples representing a speech signal or see the numbers corresponding to a TV signal.) The process of converting a digital signal into an analog signal is known as digital-to-analog (D/A) conversion. All D/A converters convert digital to analog signals by performing some kind of interpolation and approximation, whose accuracy depends on the quality of the D/A conversion process.