Communication Systems/Analog vs.

Digital
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Communication Systems
There is lots of talk nowadays about buzzwords such as "Analog" and "Digital". Certainly, engineers who are interested in creating a new communication system should understand the difference. Which is better, analog or digital? What is the difference? What are the pros and cons of each? This chapter will look at the answers to some of these questions.
Contents
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1 What are They? 2 What are the Pros and Cons? 3 Sampling and Reconstruction 4 further reading

[edit]What

are They?

What exactly is an analog signal, and what is a digital signal? Analog Analog signals are signals with continuous values. Analog signals are used in many systems, although the use of analog signals has declined with the advent of cheap digital signals. Digital Digital signals are signals that are represented by binary numbers, "1" or "0". The 1 and 0 values can correspond to different discrete voltage values, and any signal that doesnt quite fit into the scheme just gets rounded off.

[edit]What

are the Pros and Cons?

Each paradigm has its own benefits and problems. Analog Analog systems are less tolerant to noise, make good use of bandwidth, and are easy to manipulate mathematically. However, analog signals require hardware receivers and transmitters that are designed to perfectly fit the particular transmission. If you are working on a new system, and you decide to change your analog signal, you need to completely change your transmitters and receivers. Digital

Digital signals are more tolerant to noise, but digital signals can be completely corrupted in the presence of excess noise. In digital signals, noise could cause a 1 to be interpreted as a 0 and vice versa, which makes the received data different than the original data. Imagine if the army transmitted a position coordinate to a missile digitally, and a single bit was received in error? This single bit error could cause a missile to miss its target by miles. Luckily, there are systems in place to prevent this sort of scenario, such as checksums and CRCs, which tell the receiver when a bit has been corrupted and ask the transmitter to resend the data. The primary benefit of digital signals is that they can be handled by simple, standardized receivers and transmitters, and the signal can be then dealt with in software (which is comparatively cheap to change). The Difference between Digital and Discrete Digital quantity may be either 0 or 1, but discrete may be any numerical value i.e. 0,1....9.

[edit]Sampling

and Reconstruction

The process of converting from analog data to digital data is called "sampling". The process of recreating an analog signal from a digital one is called "reconstruction". This book will not talk about either of these subjects in much depth beyond this, although other books on the topic of EE might, such as A-level Physics (Advancing Physics)/Digitisation.

Comparison of Analog and Digital Communication

Module by: Don Johnson. E-mail the author Summary: Digital communication systems offer much more efficiency, better performance, and much greater flexibility. Analog communication systems, amplitude modulation (AM) radio being a typifying example, can inexpensively communicate a bandlimited analog signal from one location to another (point-to-point communication) or from one point to many (broadcast). Although it is not shown here, the coherent receiver provides the largest possible signal-to-noise ratio for the demodulated message. An analysis of this receiver thus indicates that some residual error will always be present in an analog system's output. Although analog systems are less expensive in many cases than digital ones for the same application, digital systems offer much more efficiency, better performance, and much greater flexibility.

Efficiency: The Source Coding Theorem allows quantification of just how complex a given message source is and allows us to exploit that complexity by source coding (compression). In analog communication, the only parameters of interest are message bandwidth and amplitude. We cannot exploit signal structure to achieve a more efficient communication system.

Performance: Because of the Noisy Channel Coding Theorem, we have a specific criterion by which to formulate error-correcting codes that can bring us as close to error-free transmission as we might want. Even though we may send information by way of a noisy channel, digital schemes are capable of error-free transmission while analog ones cannot overcome channel disturbances; see this problem for a comparison.

Flexibility: Digital communication systems can transmit real-valued discrete-time signals, which could be analog ones obtained by analog-to-digital conversion, and symbolic-valued ones (computer data, for example). Any signal that can be transmitted by analog means can be sent by digital means, with the only issue being the number of bits used in A/D conversion (how accurately do we need to represent signal amplitude). Images can be sent by analog means (commercial television), but better communication performance occurs when we use digital systems (HDTV). In addition to digital communication's ability to transmit a wider variety of signals than analog systems, point-to-point digital systems can be organized into global (and beyond as well) systems that provide efficient and flexible information transmission. Computer networks, explored in the next section, are what we call such systems today. Even analog-based networks, such as the telephone system, employ modern computer networking ideas rather than the purely analog systems of the past.

Consequently, with the increased speed of digital computers, the development of increasingly efficient algorithms, and the ability to interconnect computers to form a communications infrastructure, digital communication is now the best choice for many situations.

Definition of Digital - A method of storing, processing and transmitting information through the use of distinct electronic or optical pulses that represent the binary digits 0 and 1. Advantages of Digital ? Less expensive ? More reliable ? Easy to manipulate ? Flexible ? Compatibility with other digital systems ? Only digitised information can be transported through a noisy channel without degradation ? Integrated networks Disadvantages of Digital ? Sampling Error ? Digital communications require greater bandwidth than analogue to transmit the same information. ? The detection of digital signals requires the communications system to be synchronised, whereas generally speaking this is not the case with analogue systems. Definition of Analogue Analogue is a transmission standard that uses electrical impulses to emulate the audio waveform of sound. When you use a phone, the variations in your voice are transformed by a microphone into similar variations in an electrical signal and carried down the line to the exchange. Advantages of Analogue ? Uses less bandwidth ? More accurate Disadvantages of Analogue ? The effects of random noise can make signal loss and distortion impossible to recover Read more: What are the advantages and disadvantages of analog vs. digital communication? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/31169#ixzz1brqGn1Yd

A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete (discontinuous) values. By contrast, non-digital (or analog) systems use a continuous range of values to represent information. Although digital representations are discrete, the information represented can be either discrete, such as numbers, letters or icons, or continuous, such as sounds, images, and other measurements of continuous systems. The word digital comes from the same source as the word digit and digitus (the Latin word for finger), as fingers are used for discrete counting. The word digital is most commonly used in computing and electronics, especially where real-world information is converted to binary numeric form as in digital audio and digital photography. Analogue electronics (or analog in American English) are those electronic systems with a continuously variable signal. In contrast, in digital electronics signals usually take only two different levels. The term "analogue" describes the proportional relationship between a signal and a voltage or current that

represented the signal. Read more: Advantages and Disadvantages between Digital and analog radio/TV Transmissions. | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1694059#ixzz1brqflLy1