Digital Electronics

You will learn how computer and other digital devices do computing. In addition, you will learn on the applications of digital electronics as well as what to take into account when processing digital signals. In the exercises, you will simulate and synthesize digital circuits using an FPGA development board.

The course covers, among other things, the following topics:

• Basic components of digital electronics, i.e. logic gates
• Digital circuit diagrams and the Boolean expressions that describe them
• Manipulation of Boolean expressions: Boolean algebra and Karnaugh maps
• Number systems: binary, decimal, hexadecimal, octal
• Conversions between different number systems
• Negative numbers and fractional numbers in the binary system, codes
• The adder circuit and the basic principles of computer operation
• Digital signal processing: quantization and aliasing phenomena
• State machines: state transition diagrams and implementation of state machines using D flip-flops
• Counters
• Shift registers and bit shift operations
• Rules of inference in propositional logic
• Philosophy of science, scientific proof, and cognitive biases
• FPGA development platform and circuit simulator
• Simulation of logic gate circuits using a graphical programming language
• Basics of the VHDL language
• Applications of digital electronics and the basics of embedded systems
• Digital technology and energy consumption