Alessandro N. Vargas
The real life is analog. Analog and continuous are equivalent. That is, analog is the continuous in Mathematics. For instance, time, pressure, and temperature are continuous elements of nature; they can be represented as points on a ruler. For that, a precise measurement device could read and inform us of these elements with many decimals after the dot as we wish (e.g., we might be interested in what happens at the time 0.223454323 seconds). But what do analog electronics have to do with that high-precise time measurement?
Recall that electrical current and voltage are continuous elements in nature. Analog electronics represent pieces, gears, devices, and circuits that handle continuous currents and continuous voltages. Unlike digital electronics, which use discrete binary values to represent information, analog electronics can capture and manipulate the infinite variations of current and voltage. Analog electronics gave birth to phones, radios, vehicles, and even the circuits used in today's airplanes. Yet we recognize that modern devices use a mix between analog and digital circuits. Even the Internet has no life without the energy processed and treated by analog electronic circuits.
Analog electronics are used in applications where a continuous range of values is required, such as in sensors, instrumentation, radio, audio, and control systems; analog electronics are largely deployed in filtering noise and amplifying signals.
Manuals define analog electronics as all the devices that use continuous electrical signals to represent physical quantities, such as voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, inductance, and frequency. Analog electronics have been the foundation of many fields of science and engineering, such as telecommunications, radio, audio, video, radar, and instrumentation. They have enabled us to communicate over long distances, to record and reproduce sound and images, to measure and manipulate physical phenomena, and to create and process signals for various purposes.
Analog electronics are key for industrial applications. Analog electronics create the interface between the physical process and the computer, which is seen and interpreted by humans. Analog electronics give life to sensors, actuators, and control of various processes and systems..
LabControl develops research on analog electronics, especially on analog electronics applied in control systems.