Electronics Calculations Data Handbook

5

A circuit analysis toolkit

Introduction

This chapter is intended as a quick guide to the basic techniques of network analysis. The mathematical requirements are minimal; you need to be able to transpose equations and solve simultaneous equations by substitution. We also get to consider some characteristics of real voltage and current sources, which ties in nicely with some of the analysis tools presented.

We will take DC circuits for all of our examples, as this is the easiest way of demonstrating the techniques. Everything said applies equally to AC circuits as well, but you generally need to use complex numbers (see Chapter 4 and Appendix 4) to take account of phase if there are capacitors and inductors present, or sources at different ...