Digital signal
A digital signal is a type of analog signal that is a representation of a sequence of discrete values.
Contents
Description
A digital signal a quantified from some other signal, for example:
- An arbitrary bit stream
- A analog signal which has been converted from analog to digital.
Digital signals are often electronic, but may be optical.
Digital signals are present in all digital electronics, notably computing equipment and telecommunications.
Subset of analog, but treated separately
Although digital signals are strictly a subset of analog signals, they are usually treated as separate things.
As a rule of thumb, a signal may be referred to as digital if system noise is never large enough to change the quantification.
Analog signals and noise
By contrast, with analog signals, noise always degrades the operation: for example the output from a modem is normally considered an analog signal.
However, even with systems normally considered fully digital, during transitions, noise can become important -- metastability is one manifestation of this.
See also
- Analog signal
- Analog to digital conversion
- Data
- Digital to analog conversion
- Metastability
- Noise
- Quantification
- Signal
- System noise
External links
- Digital signal @ Wikipedia
