This document discusses the implications of integration in digital system design. It provides advantages like error correction, high noise immunity, reduced component count, and reliability. Disadvantages include higher power consumption, potential for quantization errors, fragility to signal loss, and slow calculation speeds compared to analog. The conclusion is that digital design offers better performance in areas like output regulation, dynamic response, size, and power output. While component counts may initially be higher, optimization could eliminate such differences. Overall, integration in digital design techniques shows promise for high performance, portability, and reliability in electronics and IT.

1. UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA,
NSUKKA
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING
TITLE:
CONSEQUENCES OF INTEGRATION IN DIGITAL
SYSTEM DESIGNS
A TERM-PAPER PREPARED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT
OF THE COURSE DIGITAL ELECTRONICS (ECE471)
NAME: Ezeonyido Kingsley Lotanna
2007/147192
LECTURER: Engr. V. C. Chijindu.

2. 1
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Digital systems design teams are facing exponentially growing complexities and
need processes and tools that reduce the time needed to gain insight into difficult
system integration problems.
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete (discontinuous) values.
By contrast, non-digital (or analog) systems use a continuous range of values to
represent information. Although digital representations are discrete, the information
represented can be either discrete, such as numbers, letters or icons, or continuous,
such as sounds, images, and other measurements of continuous systems. The design
of digital systems begins with the development of a set of specifications outlining the
requirements of the desired system. These specifications are usually composed of block
diagram, timing diagrams, flow-charts and natural language. Initial requirements for new
digital systems and products that are generally expressed in a variety of notations
including diagrams and natural language can be automatically translated to a common
knowledge representation for integration, for consistency and completeness analysis,
and for further automatic synthesis.
An example of digital system is digital information. All digital information
possesses common properties that distinguish it from analog communications
methods:

3. 2
Synchronization: In written or spoken human languages synchronization is typically
provided by pauses (spaces), capitalization, and punctuation. Machine communications
typically use special synchronization sequences.
Language: All digital communications require a language, which in this context consists
of all the information that the sender and receiver of the digital communication must
both possess, in advance, in order for the communication to be successful.
Errors: Disturbances in a digital communication do not result in errors unless the
disturbance is so large as to result in a symbol being misinterpreted as another symbol
or disturb the sequence of symbols. It is therefore generally possible to have an entirely
error-free digital communication
Copying: Because of the inevitable presence of noise, making many successive copies
of an analog communication is infeasible because each generation increases the noise.
Because digital communications are generally error-free, copies of copies can be made
indefinitely.
Granularity: When a continuously variable analog value is represented in digital form
there is always a decision as to the number of symbols to be assigned to that value.
The number of symbols determines the precision or resolution of the resulting datum.
The difference between the actual analog value and the digital representation is known
as quantization error. This property of digital communication is known as granularity.
Digital integration is the idea that data or information on any given electronic
device can be read or manipulated by another device using a standard format.
Examples of digital integration

4. 3
 Cell phone calendar to public digital calendar (online calendar)
In this example, a user has a cell phone with a calendar, as well as a calendar on the
Internet. Digital Integration would allow the user to synchronize the two, and the
following features could result:
The user could plan events and have other users notified. If the Public Digital Calendar
is integral with a Blog, then the user could write about the event in it.
 Building services integration for energy management and building control
A home owner or commercial building manager could utilize digital integration products
to connect intelligent services within a built environment. An intruder detection or access
control system could be used in conjunction with light level sensors to turn lights on and
off. So when you walk into a dark room the lights turn on (if you are allowed to be there)
and when you leave they turn off behind you, thus making energy savings by preventing
lights from being left on.
The same techniques could be used to control HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air
Conditioning) systems. Home owners and commercial building managers can use Web
based digital integration to control and manage services within their buildings via a web
browser interface. The intelligent controllers in Air Conditioning units for example may
be "Web Enabled" using digital integration solutions and products.
The digital revolution is upon us in every form. Computer performance doubles every 18
months. Networks of high performance servers are replacing mainframes at a dizzying
pace. Personal communication systems are pervasive, from remote sales tools to
medical information systems to networked workgroup tools. What is behind this

5. 4
revolution? This work describes consequences of Integration in digital systems
design in terms of their implications in the system integration phase.

6. 5
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 IMPLICATIONS OF INTEGRATION IN DIGITAL DESIGN
In engineering, system integration is the bringing together of the component
subsystems into one system and ensuring that the subsystems function together as a
system. This effect has many advantages and disadvantages of which we shall review
in this section. Our CASE STUDY shall be DIGITALLY DESIGNED CIRCUITS and
INTEGRATED CIRCUITS.
2.1 ADVANTAGES OF INTEGRATION IN DIGITAL DESIGN
CASE STUDY: DIGITALLY DESIGNED CIRCUITS
 Error Correction and Detection: Digital memory and transmission
systems can use techniques such as error detection and correction to use
additional data to correct any errors in transmission and storage. These
techniques are acceptable when the underlying bits are reliable enough that such
errors are highly unlikely.
 High Noise Immunity: The digital circuit will calculate more repeatedly,
because of its high noise immunity.
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
 Efficiency
 Reduction in Power Loss
 Output Regulation: Signals represented digitally can be transmitted without
degradation due to noise

7. 6
 Output Ripple
 Dynamic Response
 Reduced power dissipation due to adaptive dead-time control
 Ability to adjust the output voltage
 Programmable droop for enhanced current sharing performance
 Increased flexibility and faster implementation of design changes
 Option of digital power management interface without size penalty
 Component Count: The integration in Digital Circuit Design has made it obvious
that circuitry now has fewer components than before; this now makes designed
systems more portable than usual. Digital integrated circuits can contain anything
from one to millions of logic gates, flip-flops, multiplexers, and other circuits in a
few square millimeters. The small size of these circuits allows high speed, low
power dissipation, and reduced manufacturing cost compared with board-level
integration. A good example of this is the GSM and Landline or Desktop
Telephone.
 Reliability.

8. 7
2.2 DISADVANTAGES OF INTEGRATION IN DIGITAL SYSTEM DESIGN
CASE STUDY: DIGITALLY DESIGNED CIRCUITS
 MORE POWER COMSUPTION: Digital circuits use more energy than analog
circuits to accomplish the same tasks, thus producing more heat. In portable or
battery-powered systems this can limit use of digital systems.
 HIGH COST OR VERY EXPENSIVE: Digital circuits are sometimes more
expensive, especially in small quantities.
 QUANTIZATION ERRORS: Most useful digital systems must translate from
continuous analog signals to discrete digital signals. This causes quantization
errors. Quantization error can be reduced if the system stores enough digital data
to represent the signal to the desired degree of fidelity.
 CLIFF EFFECT: In some systems, if a single piece of digital data is lost or
misinterpreted, the meaning of large blocks of related data can completely
change. Because of the cliff effect, it can be difficult for users to tell if a
particular system is right on the edge of failure, or if it can tolerate much more
noise before failing.
 DIGITAL FRAGILITY: Digital fragility can be reduced by designing a digital
system for robustness. For example, a parity bit or other error management
method can be inserted into the signal path. These schemes help the system
detect errors, and then either correct the errors, or at least ask for a new copy of

9. 8
the data. In a state-machine, the state transition logic can be designed to catch
unused states and trigger a reset sequence or other error recovery routine.
 INTERMITTENT PROBLEMS: Bad designs have intermittent problems such as
"glitches", vanishingly-fast pulses that may trigger some logic but not others,
"runt pulses" that do not reach valid "threshold" voltages, or unexpected
combinations of logic states.
 SLOW CALCULATION: Since digital circuits are made from analog
components, digital circuits calculate more slowly than low-precision analog
circuits that use a similar amount of space and power.
 METASTABILITY: Where clocked digital systems interface to analogue
systems or systems that are driven from a different clock, the digital system can
be subject to metastability where a change to the input violates the set-up time
for a digital input latch. This situation will self-resolve, but will take a random time,
and while it persists can result in invalid signals being propagated within the
digital system for a short time.

10. 9
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 SUMMARIES AND CONCLUSIONS ON DIGITAL SYSTEM DESIGN
CONSEQUENCES
3.1 SUMMARY
The performance of the analog and digital designs was similar in the following areas:
 Efficiency
 Ripples of the output voltage
 Predicted reliability
The performance of the digital design was measured to be significantly better than that
of the analog version in these areas:
 Output voltage regulation
 Dynamic response
 Size of the designed system
 Output power
In addition to the measured data, the digital design offers benefits not available with the
analog implementation such as:
 Reduced power dissipation due to adaptive dead-time control

11. 10
 Ability to adjust the output voltage
 Programmable droop for enhanced current sharing performance
 Increased flexibility and faster implementation of design changes
 Option of digital power management interface without size penalty
3.2 CONCLUSION
The digital design was equal to or better than the analog reference design in
almost all respects. Component count for the digital design is somewhat higher due to a
slightly different implementation of the power train details which offset the savings of
components in the control section. Further optimization of the design should eliminate
the difference in component count.
The performance attributes and additional benefits of digital design system
summarized above shows that integration in digital design techniques have an exciting
future in electronics and IT world in terms high performance, portability, and reliability.

12. 11
REFERENCES
1. Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, The Art of Electronics 2nd Ed. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1989 ISBN 0-521-37095-7 page 471.
2. Tocci, R. 2006. Digital Systems: Principles and Applications (10th Edition).
Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131725793.
3. Eleclectronic Design Automation for Integrated Circuits Handbook, by Lavagno,
Martin, and Scheffer, ISBN 0-8493-3096-3 A survey of the field of electronic
design automation, one of the main enablers of modern IC design.
4. CIS 8020 – Systems Integration, Georgia State University.
5. An Introduction to School of Information Engineering, Information Engineering
Program, Beijing: Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
6. Texas Instruments Inc: UCD91xx Digital Power Controller Datasheet, September
2006, www.ti.com.
7. Ericsson Power Modules AB: “Performance Improvements for OEM System
designers – a Digital Control Case Study”, September, 2006, www.ericsson.com.
8. Wikipedia: “Digital Integration”, www.wikipedia.com.