Define some Applications of Digital Counters?

Digital counters are extremely useful in many applications. They can be effortlessly found in digital clocks and parallel-to-serial data conversion (multiplexing). A group of bits appearing concurrently on parallel lines is called parallel data and a group of bits appearing on a single line in a time sequence is called as serial data.

Parallel-to-serial conversion is usually accomplished by the use of a counter to provide a binary sequence for the data-select inputs of a multiplexer as illustrated in the circuit.

Thus The Q outputs of the modulus-8 counter are connected to the data-select inputs of an eight-bit multiplexer and the first byte (eight-bit group) of parallel data is applied to the multiplexer inputs. As the counter goes throughout a binary sequence from 0 to 7 each bit beginning with D0 is a sequentially selected and passed through the multiplexer to the output line. After the eight clock pulses the data byte has been converted to a serial format and sent out on the transmission line then the counter recycles back to 0 and converts another parallel byte sequentially again by the same process.