An efficient piecewise-linear DC analysis method for general non-linear circuits

✍ Scribed by Roos, Janne; Valtonen, Martti

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 201 KB
• Volume: 27
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0098-9886
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-007x(199905/06)27:3<311::aid-cta49>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

The convergence problems of conventional DC analysis can be partly avoided by using piecewise-linear analysis. This paper proposes a piecewise-linear DC analysis method that can e$ciently handle arbitrary couplings between non-linear circuit elements. Piecewise-linear modelling of the non-linear circuit elements is automatically performed during simulation, using simplicial subdivisions. The number of linear regions, and thereby iterations, is considerably reduced by combining the common parts of separate simplicial subdivisions. Due to these reasons and since the method is formulated with the commonly used modi"ed nodal approach, it has been possible to implement the method in the general-purpose circuit simulator APLAC. The correct operation of the method is demonstrated with three examples.