Electronics Explained

The New Systems Approach to Learning Electronics

Louis E. Frenzel

• Publisher: Newnes
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780080959252
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Ingegneria elettronica e telecomunicazioni

Don't worry if you never took a physics course, you can easily update your electronics knowledge by following Lou's clear and logical systems-level approach. When you finish this book you will understand different types of electronic circuits, how they work, and how they fit together to create modern electronic equipment, enabling you to apply, use, select, operate and discuss common electronic products and systems. And all this is explained using basic functional building blocks rather than detailed circuit analysis!

• Introduces you to the principles that form the basis of electronics, including the core concepts of how to generate current flow, how to control it, and magnetism.
• Learn about the basic components of electronics such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, diodes, transistors, and integrated circuits.
• Discover different types of circuits, using the functional block diagram approach which makes it easy to understand their purpose and application without requiring nitty-gritty circuit analysis.
• Get a grip on embedded controllers, the single-chip microcontrollers that are built into virtually every electronic device.
• Get involved with Hands-On projects in each chapter.

• A fresh look at how electronics work
• Learn about the inner workings of your HDTV, cell phone, and video game console
• Hands-on projects and experiments bring electronics to life

Learning about Electronics for
Your Own Good

A Little Bit of Perspective before You Get to
the Details

In this Chapter:

Why it is helpful to know electronics.

The 10,000-foot view of the electronics industry and how it works.

The systems view of electronics.

INTRODUCTION

You don’t know how lucky you are. You live in high-tech heaven surrounded by lots of useful, entertaining, interesting, necessary, and even addicting electronic products, products you cling to and would not want to give up.

But do you have any idea how many electronic products you own? Do you really know how much electronics influences your life every day? Some of you do, but most of you probably do not because your electronic gadgets are pretty much taken for granted. Yet we spend the better part of our lives working with these devices. Most of us sit in front of a computer all day at work, slouch on the couch in front of the TV at night, listen to our iPods going to and from work, and spend a weekend downloading videos off of the Internet or taking photos with a digital camera. And let’s be clear here, how many text messages did you send today or cell calls did you make? The impact on our lives of all this electronic equipment is almost overwhelming. In this first chapter, I encourage you to think about how electronics impacts your life.

And that brings us to the subject of this book, learning how electronics works. If you want a first book in electronics that gives you the big picture about how electronic equipment works, this is it. I am not going to beat you to death with a lot of complex circuits and theory or math, only what you really need to know. Then I will go on to show you how each and every one of the products you use every day actually works.

IT ISN’T LIKE IT USED TO BE

It used to be that you learned electronics by playing around with resistors, capacitors, transistors, and other devices. You wired up simple circuits, built a one- or two-transistor radio, or even built a kit. But today electronics is so different that it is hard to do that anymore. Oh yes, you can still build little circuits and radios and other gadgets, but that is not how electronic products are made today. Electronic equipment today is made with integrated circuits or ICs that we also call chips. These chips are tightly packed on printed circuit boards with resistors and capacitors that you can barely see. It is more difficult than ever to experiment with these devices, much less troubleshoot and repair them. We are in that age of electronics where unless it is a big pricey piece of equipment, you throw a defective electronic product away and simply buy a newer and better one at a lower price.

But despite the complexity of today’s electronic products, there is something just fascinating about them. Many of you actually want to know how they work. And despite their complexity, these products are actually understandable. It is possible to learn how these devices work without a whole lot of trouble. And you don’t have to learn all the math and physics required by engineers to do so. This book takes the basic ideas of electronics and reduces them down to the lowest common denominator and shows you how to use those fundamentals and apply them to all of the fabulous electronic gadgets you have today.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?

There are some big benefits to being electronic literate. Take a look at some of them.

Satisfy Your Curiosity—Surrounded by so much electronics, you often probably wondered just how all this stuff works. For some of us, not knowing how something works nags at us until we satisfy that curiosity. If you have an interest in electronics, you tend to want to know more about it. This book will get you started in the right direction.

Enhance Your Hobby—If you dabble in a hobby that uses electronics, you obviously want and need to know more about it. Lots of hobbies involve electronics such as radio-controlled models, electric trains, amateur radio, shortwave listening, citizens or family radio, audio systems, or video. Or maybe you just like playing around with your home security system, garage door opener, or your high-speed Internet connection. A major part of any hobby is learning more about it and that is very satisfying. And don’t forget—electronics itself can be your hobby. You can spend your time learning more about it and then digging deeper into those things that you want to know more about. Amateur radio is certainly one of those electronic hobbies that will take you from one extreme to the next in the radio spectrum. Anything having to do with computers is also a great hobby. With everything being controlled by an embedded microcomputer, spending more time learning about them is a great activity with nearly endless possibilities.

Job-Related Needs—You may actually be working in a job surrounded by electronic equipment of some sort, yet you do not know how it works. Often, just understanding some of the fundamentals will give you a better grasp of how to use that equipment or even troubleshoot and repair it. Understanding some of the concepts may actually help you to better select and purchase equipment that you may use.

Boost Your School Performance—For those of you going to a college or university to learn electronic engineering or technology, you regularly have your curiosity stimulated by the classes you take. Yet most of the classes are heavily involved with theory, physics, math, and circuit analysis. What you really don’t get in school is the perspective or big picture as to how the electronic products actually work. This book will give you the big picture and show you how it all comes together so that all those detailed classes in circuits and theory will make more sense.

Just so You Won’t Appear to Be So Dumb—With electronics everywhere, people often talk about it without really knowing what they are talking about. It is amazing the ignorance of people who use the electronics but don’t have a clue as to what it does or how it does it. For instance, do you really understand what an MP3 is, or why BluRay DVDs are better, or what a 3G cell phone really is? The answers are in this book. If you want to appear a little smarter to your co-workers, friends, and relatives, this book can help out. You will be able to deal with common questions and misconceptions, such as can you get shocked by a car battery, can you really get brain cancer or pop popcorn with your cell phone, or will sitting too close to your TV set make you sterile? While this book certainly won’t make you a genius, it will indeed give you the basics so that you won’t appear to be an idiot when technical questions about electronics come up.

ELECTRONICS: THE BIG PICTURE

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how electronic equipment works, you really need to know the entire scope of electronics. It is a huge industry and recent figures seem to show that it is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, markets in the entire world. To get a grasp of how big the industry is, we normally break it down into segments of specializations. There are five major fields of electronics: communications, computers, control, instrumentation and measurement, and components. Any electronic product or device will easily fall into one of those categories. In some cases, the product may overlap two or more or all of those categories. Take a look at Figure 1.1, which shows each of these segments of electronics and the products and technologies that are part of them.

FIGURE 1.1 Major sectors of the electronics industry and common applications.

Communications

Communications is the oldest segment of electronics and still the largest. Electronics actually started with communications–specifically telegraph, telephone, and radio–and grew from there. A lot of this book is about communications because it is such a huge segment of the industry and one that we use the most. And don’t forget, communications comes in both wired and wireless forms. Wired systems include the vast telephone network, cable TV systems, and computer networks, including the Internet. Wireless systems comprise all of the radio, cell phone, television, satellite, radar, and other wireless systems.

Computers

Computers have only been around since the late 1940s and early 1950s but what an impact they have had on the way we work. Today virtually everyone uses and even owns a personal computer. And then there are all the larger and more powerful computers such as the servers that manage all of our networks, the mainframes still used by government and big business to manage huge databases, as well as the high-speed supercomputers that still do an amazing amount of scientific, engineering, and mathematical design and research. But the computer we are going to talk about most in this book is the embedded controller. These are small single-chip digital computers called microcomputers or just micros that are literally part of every electronic product. These are miniature digital computers dedicated to a specific function inside the products in which they exist.

Control

Control is a broad general term for monitoring and control. Monitoring, of course, means sensing various physical characteristics such as temperature, humidity, physical position, motor shaft speed, or light level. Electronic devices called sensors or transducers convert these physical characteristics into electrical signals which allow us to monitor them. Control refers to managing and exercising some degree of influence over items such as motors, lights, relays, heating elements, and other devices. Most monitoring and control functions take place in factories, chemical plants, refineries, and food processing operations. Control also occurs in the home, an example being your electronic thermostat. It also shows up in electromechanical products like a DVD player. Electronic controls appear in appliances, home control systems, security systems, automobiles, and even toys. Robots are another major segment of the control industry.

Instrumentation

Instrumentation refers to the field involved with testing and measuring electronic equipment and other mechanical or electronic items. It refers to the test instruments like volt meters, oscilloscopes, and spectrum analyzers as well as the large automated test systems used for mass testing and measuring of other devices. Instrumentation refers to data acquisition systems, medical tests and measurements, and a wide range of other products.

Components

All of the electronic products that make up each of the four major segments of the electronic industry are made up of various electronic components. In the past, electronic products were made of the individual discrete components such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors. Today most electronic equipment is made with one or more integrated circuits surrounded by a sprinkling of those other so-called discrete components. No longer can we access most individual components or circuits since they are sealed within integrated circuits or chips. Just keep in mind that there is a whole industry centered on making these electronic components that are in turn made available to the manufacturers of the end electronic equipment in each of the four major categories just described.

HOW THE ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY WORKS

As part of the big picture of learning electronics, you really need to understand how the industry itself works. This is summed up by the simplified block diagram in Figure 1.2. It all starts with the raw materials that the component manufacturers use to create the individual components. For example, sand is refined into silicon, which, in turn, is converted into wafers that are processed into the integrated circuits we use.

The electronic equipment manufacturers design the electronic equipment for the marketplace. It may be a TV set, a cell phone, or a military radar. These companies buy the electronic components and put them together to create the end product. Manufacturers may then sell the end product directly to customers and end users. In some cases, the ...