Electronic circuit design
- Electronic circuit design
Methods
To design any electrical circuit, either analog or digital, electrical engineers need to be able to predict the voltages and currents at all places within the circuit. Linear circuits, that is, circuits with the same input and output frequency, can be analyzed by hand using complex number theory. Other circuits can only be analyzed with specialized software programs.
Circuit simulation software such as VHDL allows engineers to design circuits without the time, cost and risk of error involved in building circuit prototypes.
Network simulation software
More complex circuits must be analyzed with circuit simulation software such as SPICE and EMTP.
Linearization around operating point
When faced with a new circuit, the software first tries to find a steady state solution, that is, one where all nodes conform to Kirchhoff's Current Law "and" the voltages across and through each element of the circuit conform to the voltage/current equations governing that element.
Once the steady state solution is found, the operating points of each element in the circuit are known. For a small signal analysis, every non-linear element can be linearized around its operation point to obtain the small-signal estimate of the voltages and currents. This is an application of Ohm's Law. The resulting linear circuit matrix can be solved with Gaussian elimination.
Piece-wise linear approximation
Software such as the PLECS interface to Simulink uses piece-wise linear approximation of the equations governing the elements of a circuit. The circuit is treated as a completely linear network of ideal diodes. Every time a diode switches from on to off or vice versa, the configuration of the linear network changes. Adding more detail to the approximation of equations increases the accuracy of the simulation, but also increases its running time.
ee also
*Integrated circuit design
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