AN EFFICIENT ALGORITHM FOR FINDING ALL SOLUTIONS OF PIECEWISE-LINEAR RESISTIVE CIRCUITS

This paper presents an efficient algorithm for finding all solutions of piecewise-linear resistive circuits. First, a technique is proposed that substantially reduces the number of function evaluations needed in the piecewise-linear modeling process. Then a simple and very efficient sign test is proposed that remarkably reduces the number of linear simultaneous equations to be solved for finding all solutions. An effective technique that makes the sign test further more efficient is also introduced. All of the techniques exploit the separability of nonlinear mappings. Some numerical examples are given, and it is shown that all solutions are computed very rapidly. Our algorithm is simple and efficient, and it can be easily programmed.