i really need to know what are analog signals and digital signals?

Question

i googled, searched in wikipedia, but i don't understand what is it. may be it is because i dont know the real technical language sound people use. can any one please explain me in simple words?

Answer 1

Here goes....



An analog signal is a signal that can be produced/reproduced with simple analog frequencies. An analog frequency is more "natural", like sound waves or ripples in a pond.



A digital signal is a series of ones and zeros - there is no "in between" (like an analog signal). The ones and zeros are like a code to indicate something. Like "Morse code"



To take things a little further.....

They have something called "bandwidth" - which you need as much as you can get. BUT it's limited. So in order to transfer more information using the same amount of bandwidth, they use digital signals because they require less bandwidth than analog signals.

Answer 2

Analog is like voice. Commonly referred to as a sine wave. The AC Voltage in your home is also a sine wave. Digital is like your computer. There is a voltage or there is not a voltage. Or like a light. Either it is on or off. In the past almost everything was analog. Radio, TV, phone, cellular, radar.... Now analog signals are sampled and given a digital representation. This is done for the ease of manipulation of those signals. This information can be 'keyed' or 'coded' so that more than one information source can be transmitted on a carrier. This is called multiplexing. Because the information is identified by a key, code or timeframe it can be extracted from the carrier on the receiving end. This is how you have different programs on a single digital channel on your TV. Light energy would be analog but the video signal that is received on your TV is digital.

Answer 3

Analog is mechanical.



Digital is computerized.



Analog is tools measuring things.



Digital is a code-breaking device decoding information that has been written in binary code, primarily.



A person pumping a bucket of water from a hand pump, or a photograph or film of it, would be analog versions, while a computer animation of it would be digital.



The signals that a television receives are different levels of those electrical terms being read by a receiver, but not decoded. TV channels were originally each given a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum(called bandwidth) to work with, where as now, most TV signals go over one tightly packed, and different part of that spectrum using digital encoding.

Answer 4

Analog signals are, which are continuous, in values. Lets suppose if you do some maths and label the degrees in a chronograph watch, you will see you would be able to get all the values the needle is passing by, but in normal watch, the second needle will directly jump from 1 to 2, 2 to 3 and so on. That is not even digital but this will give you some idea. Take a look at some ECG output, you will find some waves, but the data that transfers in line for that the values just come out to be 0 or one, but for ECG if you have enough (microscopic) labeling you would be able to see that the output can even go in as many places in decimals. Hope that helps.

Answer 5

Digital signals are simply "true" or "false". Analog signals are any value on a range of values.



Think about it like a watch: The analog watch has an indicator showing you where you are on a 24-hr scale. A digital watch has a bunch of indicator lights that are either on or off which we then infer to be the numbers that indicate the time.

Answer 6

An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature (variable) of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are meaningful. Analog is usually thought of in an electrical context; however, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and other systems may also convey analog signals.



An analog signal uses some property of the medium to convey the signal's information. For example, an aneroid barometer uses rotary position as the signal to convey pressure information. Electrically, the property most commonly used is voltage followed closely by frequency, current, and charge.



A digital signal is a physical signal that is a representation of a sequence of discrete values (a quantified discrete-time signal), for example of an arbitrary bit stream, or of a digitized (sampled and analog-to-digital converted) analog signal. The term digital signal can refer to



1. a continuous-time waveform signal used in any form of digital communication.

2. a pulse train signal that switches between a discrete number of voltage levels or levels of light intensity, also known as a a line coded signal, for example a signal found in digital electronics or in serial communications using digital base band transmission in, or a pulse code modulation (PCM) representation of a digitized analog signal.



A signal that is generated by means of a digital modulation method (digital pass band transmission), produced by a modem, is in the first case considered as a digital signal, and in the second case as converted to an analog signal.

Answer 7

Analog signals are like how. a radio works. example: you raise or lower a voltage through a certain range and a receiver can make sense of the variations and digital is just a stream of 0,s and 1,s. which is a binary language.

Answer 8

a digital signal is a anologue signal chopped into slices of witch each slice is measured and given a numerical value which can be transmited or stored as a number and then the slices can be put back together and the distorsion or noise normaly associated with anologue can be totaly filtered out,the quality of the signal reproduced is dependent on the sampling frequency of the slices,a special circuit is required to decifer the signals from one to the other usually called a/d or d/a conversion chips