Course abstract

There is a flux of terms in recent times that starts with the word ‘digital’. Examples are digital camera, digital watch, digital weighing machine, digital signature, digital payment, digital art and so on. The digital prefix associates a term with digital technology and is considered a step up in the delivered performance at a given cost. The world of digital provides easy storage and reproduction, immunity to noise and interference, flexibility in processing, different transmission options, and very importantly, inexpensive building blocks in the form of integrated circuits. Digital systems represent and manipulate digital signals. Such signals represent only finite number of discreet values. A signal can be discreet by nature whereas, a continuous signal can be discretized for digital processing and then converted back. Manipulation and storage of digital signal involves switching. This switching is done through electronic circuits. Basic gates made from electronic circuits are primary building blocks of digital systems. These gates combine in different ways to develop digital circuits that are associated with different functionalities. This is helped by an understanding of Boolean Algebra. The functional blocks in turn, combine to generate a complex digital system. There are general purpose programmable blocks, too. This course is aimed at developing a deep understanding of digital electronic circuits. At the end of the course, one would be able to analyze and synthesize different kind of combinatorial and sequential digital systems for real-world use.