Digital Electronics

KARNAUGH MAPPING

Karnaugh map is a visual depiction of a Boolean expression. This tool was introduced in 1953 by Maurice Karnaugh. It is a scheme of reducing the intricacy and expressing the truth table of a given Boolean expression in the form of a map. The Karnaugh map comprises of small squares put together to form a table. Each cell of the table has one minterm derived from the Boolean expression. A 2-variable Boolean expression has four minterms and thus, has four cells in the Karnaugh map. In general, n variables have 2ⁿ cells in the Karnaugh map. While performing the sum of the product method “1” is taken as the variable and “0” as its complement. Thus, a 2-variable map has 4 squares, a 3-variable map has 8 squares, and a 4-variable map ...