13.1 Principles of digital electronics  (Page 2/7)

Logic gates

There are five main types of logic gate: NOT, AND, OR, NAND and NOR. Each one makes its decision in a different way.

The not gate

Problem: You want an automatic circuit in your office to turn on the heating in the winter. You already have a digital electronic temperature sensor. When the temperature is high, it sends out a 1. When the office is cold, it sends out a 0. If this signal were sent straight to the heater, the heater would turn on (1) when it was already hot, and would stay off when it was cold. This is wrong! To make the heater work, we need a circuit which will change a 0 (from the sensor) into a 1 (to send to the heater). This will make the heater come on when it is cold. You also want it to change a 1 (from the sensor) into a 0 (to send to the heater). This will turn the heater off when the room is hot. This circuit is called an inverter or NOT gate . It changes 0 into 1 (1 is NOT 0). It changes 1 into 0 (0 is NOT 1). It changes a signal into what it is NOT.

The symbol for the NOT gate is:

The action of the NOT gate can be written in a table called a truth table . The left column shows the possible inputs on different rows. The right column shows what the output (decision) of the circuit will be for that input. The truth table for the NOT gate is shown below.

When you read the truth table, the top row says, “If the input is 0, the output will be 1.” For our heater, this means, “If the room is cold, the heater will turn on.” The bottom row says, “If the input is 1, the output will be 0.” For our heater, this means, “If the room is hot, the heater will switch off.”

The and gate

Problem: An airliner has two toilets. Passengers get annoyed if they get up from their seat only to find that both toilets are being used and they have to go back to their seat and wait. You want to fit an automatic circuit to light up a display if both toilets are in use. Then passengers know that if the light is off, there will be a free toilet for them to use. There is a sensor in each toilet. It gives out a 0 of the toilet is free, and a 1 if it is in use. You want to send a 1 to the display unit if both sensors are sending 1s. To do this, you use an AND gate.

The symbol for the AND gate is:

The truth table for the AND gate is shown below. An AND gate has two inputs (the NOT gate only had one). This means we need four rows in the truth table, one for each possible set of inputs. The first row, for example, tells us what the AND gate will do if both inputs are 0. In our airliner, this means that both toilets are free. The right column has a 0 showing that the output will be 0, so the display will not light up. The second row has inputs of 0 and 1 (the first toilet is free, the other is in use). Again the output is 0. The third row tells us what will happen if the inputs are 1 and 0 (the first toilet is in use, and the second is free). Finally, the last line tells us what will happen if both inputs are 1 (the first toilet is in use and the second toilet is in use). It is only in this case that the output is 1 and the display lights up.