This document discusses signed number representation in 8051 microcontrollers. It explains that the most significant bit is used as the sign bit, with 0 representing positive numbers and 1 representing negative. Negative numbers are represented using two's complement. It provides examples of how positive and negative numbers are represented in binary. It also discusses overflow issues that can occur with signed number addition and when the overflow flag would be set. Finally, it presents a problem involving adding 5 numbers in BCD format and provides a solution.