Topological analysis of qualitative features in electrical circuit theory

Abstract

Several qualitative properties of equilibria in electrical circuits are analyzed in this paper. Specifically, non-singularity, hyperbolicity, and asymptotic stability are addressed in terms of the circuit topology, which is captured through the use of Modified Nodal Analysis (MNA) models. The differential-algebraic or semistate nature of these models drives the analysis of the spectrum to a matrix pencil setting, and puts the results beyond the ones already known for state-space models, unfeasible in many actual problems. The topological conditions arising in this qualitative study are proved independent of those supporting the index, and therefore they apply to both index-1 and index-2 configurations. The analysis combines results coming from graph theory, matrix analysis, matrix pencil theory, and Lyapunov theory for DAEs. The study is restricted to problems with independent sources; qualitative properties of circuits including controlled sources are the focus of future research.