Canonical representations of piecewise-affine circuits

A piecewise-affine circuit model is only one of the many approximate descriptions for a nonlinear circuit. Piecewise-affine (PWA) analysis gives the possibility of resorting to linear analysis techniques and provides remarkable insight into problems arising in nonlinear circuits. The newly developed canonical representation presented extends the canonical representation proposed by Chua and Kang (1977) into PWA partitions which arise frequently in driving-point, transfer characteristics and state equations. Thus, compact global analytical formulations for a rather general class of PWA circuits have been derived. The results obtained are important for computational purposes as well as theoretical studies in PWA analysis. Further study is needed in order to put to use the characterizations given here