A new efficient algorithm for analysis of piecewise-linear resistive circuits (driving-point and transfer characteristic plots)

An efficient algorithm is presented for finding all driving-point and transfer characteristic plots for a broad class of piecewise-linear resistive circuits, without the need for initial points for each solution branch. The circuits need not be continuous, nor need their linear regions be divided by gridlike hyperplanes. The computation of is zone by zone, instead of the conventional region by region. Since each zone includes several regions and only one matrix inversion is needed for each zone, a significant reduction of computation can be achieved. The computational complexity for finding all solution branches, i.e. finding the DC operating points over the entire range of input values, is no more than finding all DC operating points over a single input value as far as the number of matrices that need to be inverted is concerned