Nature of our world:
We live in an analog world. It means there are an infinite amount of colors to paint an object (even if the difference is indiscernible to our eye), there are an infinite number of tones we can hear, and there are an infinite number of smells we can smell. The common theme among all of these analog signals is their infinite possibilities at any instant of time.
Digital signals and objects deal in the realm of the discrete or finite, meaning there is a limited set of values they can be. That could mean just two total possible values, 255, 4,294,967,296, or anything as long as it’s not ∞ (infinity).
First, lets talk about the easiest to understand - Analog Signals
Analog Signals:
In electronics, the term Analog is associated with continuously changing values of a Voltage signal. If a graph was to be plotted between the amplitude of the signal and time it would certainly look like this:
Because the signal changes forever, its helpful to plot a graph. Here the x-axis represents time and y-axis represents the value of the signal. While the anlog signals may be limited to a range of maximum and minimum values, there are still an infinite number of possible values within that range. For example, the analog voltage coming out of your wall socket might be clamped between -220V and +220V, but, as you increase the resolution more and more, you discover an infinite number of values that the signal can actually be (like 124.4V, 124.42V, 124.424V, and infinite, increasingly precise values).
Digital Signals:
Digital Signals on the other hand have only a finite set of possible values. The number of values in the set can be anywhere between two and a-very-large-number-that’s-not-infinity. Most commonly digital signals will be one of two values – like either 0V or 5V. If we plot a graph of this signal with time, it would look like this:
The signal shown above has a range of 0V-5V but at any instant of time, the signal can only be in one of the two discrete states (two is not infinite), that is, either 5V or 0V. Thus such signals are called Digital. Infact the device on which you are reading this post is a Digital Device, that is to say, it understands signals that are discrete in nature or the signals which have finite set of possible values.
I hope you have a clear understanding of this concept. More such posts will be coming before the Robotics Workshop. If you have any doubts, feel free to ask.
I really encourage you to read the other posts and share this one with your friends so that they can also understand.
Thanks for reading.
Post By:
Devansh Atray