Design-oriented circuit dynamics

edn.com/design-oriented-circuit-dynamics/

Dennis Feucht January 6, 2013

Circuit Dynamics Article Series Preface

The first few articles in this series were originally

published in a different form at www.en-genius.net
as the July – September 2012 monthly technotes.
Then En-Genius ceased operations in October
2012. To provide a complete set of articles here at
EDN , the first three have been reworked,
reorganized, and extended.

This series is excerpted from a 43-page

monograph, “Design-Oriented Analysis of
Dynamic Circuit Response” which was a
document that I wrote to organize my own
thinking while writing Transistor Amplifiers , an approximately 423-page book that has
been submitted to a prospective publisher. This series can be considered a glimpse into
some of what the forthcoming book addresses.

Circuit dynamics is often the hardest aspect of circuit design and deserves some
systematic attention. Reading through this series will put you back in school, but if I
succeed in my goal in writing it, you will come out of it with a few clear and powerful ideas
on how to design dynamic circuit response. Happily, as is so often the case in electronics,
the higher math transforms into the complex-number algebra of the s -domain and results
in a sometimes-intensive application of high-school math.

Some of what is presented here is found in typical engineering circuits textbooks to

provide conceptual continuity, but much of it is not. Some insights have been culled from
the textbooks I have, though the series goes well beyond textbook-level treatment to
include some of what wideband oscilloscope amplifier designers at Tektronix have known
for decades, though diffusion of these powerful concepts into the industry has been slow.
Then there are circuit theorems that have yet to become widespread in practice that can
simplify circuit analysis for design. Some of these are included in the series.

Circuit Dynamics for Design

Some engineers have lapsed into the habit of designing circuits by diddling with them on
SPICE until the desired behavior results. This is the counterpart in older days of putting
adjustments into prototype circuits and tweaking them. In both cases, it is experimentally-
driven design. A blunter way of putting it is that it is designing without the illumination of
methods of analysis that guide design toward optimal solutions. In this article, we look at
some aspects of circuit analysis that lead to simpler methods for design.

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The problem of how to algebraically determine the bandwidth and s -domain poles and
zeros of transistor circuits has its roots in the mathematics of transfer-function
polynomials and their relationship to circuit structure. Some of the theorems in the theory
of equations reveal what the coefficients of the transfer function polynomials must be and
from them have developed techniques for finding dynamic circuit response – primarily
bandwidth – of transistor amplifiers.

The techniques are all algebraic rather than numerical so that the effects of circuit
elements on performance for design can be identified in the equations and their effects
evaluated. A roughly historical progression of refinement to simpler, more intuitive
methods is shown below.

The dynamic response of circuits is most easily (and most often) determined by computer
circuit simulation. This method numerically solves the basic circuit equations in matrix
form as a matrix inversion problem. The solution is the circuit behavior. Symbolic circuit
computation can produce results in parametric form, but the math expressions (for a
circuit of any complexity) are unwieldy (or of “high entropy”) and generally difficult to
interpret and apply to design.

Both numerical and symbolic computer solutions do not reveal the kinds of insights into
the relationship between circuit structure and behavior that is desired for design because
neither make explicit the higher circuit principles which bring a clarifying simplicity to the
analysis. Design-oriented analysis emphasizes higher-level principles involved in the
circuit. The methods of analysis in the chart attempt just that and some of the underlying
ideas common to them are brought out in this series so that a clearer view of the whole of
design-oriented analysis leaves us with a few simple “metaconcepts”.

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Circuits and their Polynomials

We begin with some general observations about circuits and transfer function poles and
zeros. Each independent reactive element (capacitance or inductance) in a circuit
contributes an s to the circuit equations, either in s ·L or 1/s ·C . In the basic loop or node
equations, some reactances combine into one effective reactance because they are in
series or parallel. A less obvious dependence is capacitors that form a loop, as is the
case in the hybrid-pi model of a BJT stage, with the loop shown below.

Although (besides ground) two separate nodes are involved,

C cannot be reduced to a simple two-terminal equivalent. The
resulting node capacitances are

where || is not a topological descriptor but the parallel math

operator for capacitances in series. The three Cs form a
dependence in these two nodal Cs as all three are involved in
both nodal capacitance expressions.
Three Cs form equivalent capacitances
at two ports. Consider reactive-element

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dependencies to be reduced to single effective reactances for the following general circuit
theory. Thus the three Cs are equivalently 2 Cs at the 2 nodes.

Reactive elements, having two terminals, can each be viewed as connected across a port
into the rest of the circuit. The resistance of the circuit at the port (or “looking into the
circuit” at the port) is the driving-point resistance which forms a time constant with the port
reactance. These time constants relate to poles or zeros in the transfer function(s) of the
circuit. For two poles and two zeros, a transfer function in normalized form is

where τn is the natural time constant

and ζ is the damping. Factors of first
and second-degree polynomials in
numerator and denominator result in
two poles (the roots of D (s )) and two
zeros (roots of N (s )). Time constants, τi , in polynomial factors are of the form (s ·τi
+ 1) = (s /pi + 1), and the poles in D (s ) (and zeros in N (s )) are –pi = –1/τi or –zi = –1/τi
.

From n reactances results an n -degree pole polynomial, D (s ), and up to an n -degree

polynomial of zeros, N (s ). The general form of the transfer function is that of a rational
function of polynomials in the complex frequency, s . In normalized form, both polynomials
are of the form

Each frequency variable s has a unit of s–1

(1/second) so that sm has units of s–m .
The polynomial terms must be unitless
because a 0 = 1 is unitless. Thus am must have units of sm (and have m time constants)
and consequently must be the product of m reactive elements: X1 . X2 …. Xm where X is C
or L .

The number of terms in am is the combination of n reactances taken as m products at a

time, or

Then the number of terms in a 0 and an is

Moving in one term on each end of the polynomial, the number of

terms of the coefficients of degree of 1 and n – 1 is

The number of terms is symmetrical with m . Coefficients of

highest and lowest degree, then next highest and lowest, etc.,
have the same number of terms. For n = 2, the number of terms,
in order, are: 1, 2, 1. For n = 3: 1, 3, 3, 1; and for n = 4: 1, 4, 6,
4, 1.

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The linear coefficient, a 1 , of the s term is a sum of time constants of each reactance with
a circuit resistance that is the port resistance of the reactive element with the other
reactive elements set to zero (Cs open, Ls shorted). With Cj = 0 pF, j i , the open-
circuit resistance of Ci can be found. By setting Ci to zero, all the higher-degree terms
are set to zero too, leaving only the Ci open-circuit resistance.

To show this, consider the following two-port circuit.

The port equations using resistance parameters are

The impedance of the capacitors is 1/s ·Cj = –vj /ij

where voltage and current are of the same port.
(The negative sign refers the port impedance to
the other side of the port, where Cj is (or “looking
into Cj ”) because the current direction by port
convention is reversed by it.) Hence the 1/s ·Cj are paralleled with the rjj which are the
open-port resistances. The port 1 open-port resistance, r 11 , is

For port 2,

In general, for n C ports, all are open-circuited

while Rjj is found. Thus we have a method for
finding the open-circuit time constants (OCTC s) of
the Ci of a circuit. For Ls, the dual situation applies
and inductance ports are shorted instead of opened.
For mixed Cs and Ls, open Cs and short Ls.

The above two-port argument does not prove that the linear term in D (s ) is the sum of
OCTCs, only that the other capacitor ports must be open-circuited to find the port
resistance Rjj . If each of the capacitors is to contribute to the linear-term coefficient, they
must appear in it in a term without other capacitances as products in order to form a time
constant of unit s to cancel the s–1 unit of s .

Thus the coefficient must be a sum of time constants of each capacitor. To eliminate the
effects of the other capacitors in D (s ) they are set equal to zero (that is, open-circuited).
Then only the resistance of capacitor Cj remains in the linear term and is thus Rjj . The
higher-degree terms of D (s ) go to zero leaving the pole s ·Rjj ·Cj + 1, where Rjj is the
resistance of the port of Cj with ports of other capacitors open-circuited.

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Pole Time Constants and OCTCs

When the time constants in the coefficients are combinations of products of the OCTCs in
a 1 , then the poles (or zeros) correspond to the OCTCs as pi = –1/τi . For a circuit with all
real poles, D (s ) is the product of the pole factors

The s terms are the OCTCs. After the OCTCs are found, the coefficients of the terms of
higher degree are determined. However, not just any τi in a 1 appearing as a sum of time
constants in a 1 from circuit analysis are OCTCs. The τi in a 1 must be grouped together
with a common Ci factor in each term for the terms to be OCTCs.

For the time constants of poles or zeros, every term in am has a unique set of conditions
(opened and shorted ports) that isolate the τi in am as having a port resistance at port i .
A term in the transfer function polynomials can be isolated by setting all other terms to
zero.

Other reactive factors are eliminated by shorting port i so that a given Ci goes to infinity or
opening it to set Ci to zero. In the polynomial, to short Ci , divide all am by Ci . All terms
not containing Ci as a factor are set to zero. When any Ci is opened, an = 0. This
scheme of isolating terms is the basis for the method of Cochrun and Grabel to find the
circuit poles, and of the n Extra Element Theorem. A. M. Davis worked out methods
based on it. For n = 3, a 2 can have the form of a polynomial with complex roots:

a2 = (R 1 ·C 1 )·R 2;1 ·C 2 + (R 1 ·C 1 )·R 3;1 ·C 2 + (R 2 ·C 2 )·R 3;2 ·C 3

where the Ri are the OCTC resistances from a 1 and Rm ;k are the resistances to be
found. The port resistance, R 2;1 is found at port 2 by shorting port 1 and opening the
other ports. The method is described in more detail later.

One of the issues to be addressed is whether the OCTCs associated with reactive
elements are the only way to determine the poles and zeros of transfer functions and port
impedances, or whether they can be calculated from time constants at nodes instead.
The answer generally is no , though the differences in value can be subtle and therefore
misleading, as will be shown in a subsequent article.

Closure

In this article, some of the basic insights needed for organized algebraic (and hence
design-oriented) analysis of circuits have been reviewed. With the transfer function of a
circuit, the bandwidth or risetime can be determined by various methods, the subject of a
forthcoming article.

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