Special section on analysis, design and optimization of nonlinear circuits

摘要

Nonlinear theory plays an indispensable role in analysis, design and optimization of electric/electronic circuits because almost all circuits in the real world are modeled by nonlinear systems. Also, as the scale and complexity of circuits increase, more effective and systematic methods for the analysis, design and optimization are desired. The goal of this special section is to bring together research results from a variety of perspectives and academic disciplines related to nonlinear electric/electronic circuits.This special section includes three invited papers and six regular papers. The first invited paper by Kennedy entitled “Recent advances in the analysis, design and optimization of digital delta-sigma modulators” gives an overview of digital delta-sigma modulators and some techniques for improving their efficiency. The second invited paper by Trajkovic entitled “DC operating points of transistor circuits” surveys main theoretical results on the analysis of DC operating points of transistor circuits and discusses numerical methods for calculating them. The third invited paper by Nishi et al. entitled “Some properties of solution curves of a class of nonlinear equations and the number of solutions” gives several new theorems concerning solution curves of a class of nonlinear equations which is closely related to DC operating point analysis of nonlinear circuits. The six regular papers cover a wide range of areas such as memristors, chaos circuits, filters, sigma-delta modulators, energy harvesting systems and analog circuits for solving optimization problems.The guest editor would like to express his sincere thanks to the authors who submitted their papers to this special section. He also thanks the reviewers and the editorial committee members of this special section for their support during the review process. Last, but not least, he would also like to acknowledge the editorial staff of the NOLTA journal for their continuous support of this special section.