Finding all DC solutions of nonlinear resistive circuits byexploring both polyhedral and rectangular circuits

摘要

A new fast method for finding all the DC solutions ofnpiecewise-linear (PWL) resistive circuits is presented. The structure ofnthe algorithm is based on the exploration of a binary tree: each nodenrepresents a specific PWLsub circuit, derived from the original PWLncircuit by truncating the original PWL characteristics. The terminalnnodes of the tree represent the linear circuits related to single linearnregions. The natural exponential growth of the tree is controlled by twondifferent criteria. They are based on the investigation of the convexnsolution domains of the so-called polyhedral circuits or, alternatively,nof the so-called rectangular circuits, The first criterion is morenefficient but more CPU-time consuming than the second one. Annappropriate combination of both allows the realisation of an overallnalgorithm faster than those based on a unique criterion,