
Principles of Analog Electronics
118
4.5.2 Ideal Current Source
An ideal current source is dened as a two-terminal device capable of producing
and maintaining a dened current i
s
(t) for any voltage at its terminals.
Therefore, as dened, we describe a constitutive equation by
i
s
(t) = f
i
(t)
where f
i
(t) refers to an arbitrary function that does not have any dependence on
other electrical parameters. Considering such independence, the source we are
talking about is also said to be an independent current source.
The independent source of current is typi-
cally used as a model for various electronic cir-
cuits containing real active elements.
When the fu ...