Basic Electronics Lecture 2
Basic Electronics Lecture 2
Circuits
What are Analog
Signals
We are all very familiar with devices that use
analog or digital electronic circuits, even if we
don’t realize these circuits are present. Many
modern devices use both. For example, a
cellular phone (sometimes called a mobile
phone) has analog and digital circuits. A
computer has both. An older AM or FM radio
that’s tuned using a dial likely has no digital
circuitry at all, while a radio with a digital display
has both analog and digital circuitry.
Analog VS Digital
So what’s the difference between analog and
digital? An analog signal is continuously variable,
while a digital signal is broken into discrete
steps. For example, think of the face of a clock.
With an analog clock, the second hand sweeps
around in a smooth, continuous motion, showing
the exact time at any instant. A digital clock
display ticks off the time in one second steps,
without showing the time in between.
Linear / Analog
Circuits
Analog circuits are sometimes called
linear circuits, in which there generally is
an input (such as the voice signal from
the microphone in a public address
system) and an output (a bigger, or
amplified, version of the voice signal that
comes out of the speaker). What makes
such an amplifier linear is that if you
increase the size (the fancy term for this
is amplitude) of the input signal —
perhaps by talking louder into the
microphone — the output signal also
gets bigger.
Linear / Analog
Circuits
• Figure 2-2A shows an amplifier with a small signal at its
input, and a larger signal at its output. The output signal is
three times the amplitude of the input signal; we can say the
gain of this amplifier, in this example, is three.
• In Figure 2-2B the input signal is larger, and the output signal
is still three times as big as the input signal. No matter what
the size of the input signal, the output will always be three
times larger, until a point is reached where the output signal
can’t get any bigger. You may have heard this occur when
the volume on an inexpensive radio is turned up too high it
sounds distorted. At this point, the linear amplifier has
reached the upper end of its linear range.
Linear / Analog
Circuits
Applications
• Analog circuits are found in virtually all
devices. In a cell phone (Figure 2-3), there is
an amplifier for the tiny voice signal coming
from the microphone, which increases the
voice signal to the right level for use in the
outgoing transmitted signal. Another amplifier
boosts the incoming voice signal (from the
person on the other end of the cell phone
conversation), making it big enough to drive
the earpiece or the speaker of the cell phone.
• Another example of an analog circuit is a guitar amplifier,
such as the one shown in Figure 2-4. When the guitar string
vibrates, a “pickup” on the guitar turns these vibrations into
tiny electrical signals. These signals are sent from the guitar
to the amplifier through a cable. Inside the guitar amplifier
Linear / Analog are several different amplifiers that are connected so that
output of one amplifier is connected to the input of the next
Circuits Examples amplifier, as shown in Figure 2-5. (The amplifiers are said to
be connected in cascade.) Each amplifier boosts the
amplitude of the signal in turn until it is big enough to make
a large speaker fill a room with guitar sounds.
World is Analog
• The world is inherently analog: sound
levels, brightness of the sky, temperature
and weight of your body, amount of water
in a cup or a lake, speed of a car, altitude of
an airplane, length of a blade of grass, to
name a few. However, in order to measure,
record and control analog parameters such
as these, it’s increasingly common for
digital techniques to be used.
Digital Electronic
Circuits
What is digital There are a whole lot of electronic devices in the
world today, and increasingly more and more of