Symbolic circuit analysis is a formal technique of circuit analysis to calculate the behaviour or characteristic of an electric/electronic circuit with the independent variables (time or frequency), the dependent variables (voltages and currents), and (some or all of) the circuit elements represented by symbols. When analysing electric/electronic circuits, we may ask two types of questions: What is the value of certain circuit variable (voltage, current, resistance, gain, etc.) or what is the relationship between some circuit variables or between a circuit variable and circuit components and frequency (or time). Such relationship may take the form of a graph, where numerical values of a circuit variable are plotted versus frequency or component value (the most common example would be a plot of the magnitude of a transfer function vs. frequency). Symbolic circuit analysis is concerned with obtaining those relationships in symbolic form, i.e., in the form of analytical expression, where the complex frequency (or time) and some or all of the circuit components are represented by symbols.
Frequency domain expressions In the frequency domain the most common task of symbolic circuit analysis is to obtain the relationship between input and output variables in the form of a rational function in the complex frequency s {\displaystyle {\mathit {s}}\,} and symbolic variables x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } :
The above relationship is often called the network function. For physical systems, N ( s , x ) {\displaystyle N(s,\mathbf {x} )} and D ( s , x ) {\displaystyle D(s,\mathbf {x} )} are polynomials in s {\displaystyle {\mathit {s}}\,} with real coefficients:
where z i ( x ) {\displaystyle z_{i}(\mathbf {x} )} are the zeroes and p i ( x ) {\displaystyle p_{i}(\mathbf {x} )} are the poles of the network function; m ⩾ n {\displaystyle m\geqslant n} . While there are several methods for generating coefficients a i ( x ) {\displaystyle a_{i}(\mathbf {x} )} and b i ( x ) {\displaystyle b_{i}(\mathbf {x} )} , no technique exists to obtain exact symbolic expressions for poles and zeroes for polynomials of order higher than 5.
Types of symbolic network functions Depending on which parameters are kept as symbols, we may have several different types of symbolic network functions. This is best illustrated on an example. Consider, for instance, the biquad filter circuit with ideal op amps, shown below. We want to obtain a formula for its voltage transmittance (also called the voltage gain) in the frequency domain, T v ( s ) = V o u t ( s ) / V i n ( s ) {\displaystyle {T_{v}(s)=V_{out}(s)/V_{in}(s)}\,} .
Network function with s as the only variable If the complex frequency s {\displaystyle {\mathit {s}}\,} is the only variable, the formula will look like this (for simplicity we use the numerical values: R i = i , C i = 0.01 i {\displaystyle R_{i}=i,C_{i}=0.01i\,} ):
Semi-symbolic network function If the complex frequency s {\displaystyle {\mathit {s}}\,} and some circuit variables are kept as symbols (semi-symbolic analysis), the formula may take a form:
Fully symbolic network function If the complex frequency s {\displaystyle {\mathit {s}}\,} and all circuit variables are symbolic (fully symbolic analysis), the voltage transmittance is given by (here G i = 1 / R i {\displaystyle G_{i}=1/R_{i}\,} ):
If resistances are used, the above formula takes the form:
All expressions above are extremely useful in obtaining insight into operation of the circuit and understanding how each component contributes to the overall circuit performance. As the circuit size increases, however, the number of terms in such expressions grows exponentially. So, even for relatively simple circuits, the formulae become too long to be of any practical value. One way to deal with this problem is to omit numerically insignificant terms from the symbolic expression, keeping the inevitable error below the predetermined limit.
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