Advantages of Digital Techniques

An increasing majority of applications in electronics, as well as in most other technologies, use digital techniques to perform operations that were once performed using analog methods.                          
The main reasons for the shift to digital technology are:
1. Digital systems are generally easier to design. This is because the circuits that are used are switching circuits, where exact values of voltage are not important, only the range (HIGH or LOW) in which they fall.
2. Information storage is easy. This is accomplished by special switching circuits that can latch onto information and hold it for as long as necessary.
3. Accuracy and precision are greater. Digital systems can handle as many digits of precision as you need simply by adding more switching circuits. In analog systems, precision is usually
limited to three or four digits because the values of voltage and current are directly dependent on the circuit component values.
4. Operation can be programmed. It is fairly easy to design digital systems whose operation is controlled by a set of stored instructions called a program. As technology progresses, this is becoming even easier. Analog systems can also be programmed, hut the variety and complexity of the available operations is severely limited.
5. Digital circuits are less affected by noise. Spurious fluctuations in voltage (noise) are not as critical in digital systems because the exact value of a voltage is not important, as long as the noise is not large enough to prevent us from distinguishing a HIGH from a LOW.
6. More digital circuitry can be fabricated on IC chips. It is true that analog circuitry has also benefited from the tremendous development of IC technology, but its relative complexity and its use of devices that cannot be economically integrated (high-value capacitors, precision resistors, inductors, transformers) have prevented analog systems from achieving the same high degree of integration.