Preface

Rationale (Advanced Circuit Analysis)

A circuit analysis, a discipline of electrical engineering, finds the voltage across and current through all the circuit components provided that a circuit operates in a steady-state regime and the input signals are either dc or sinusoidal. An advanced circuit analysis does the same work but includes into consideration the transient process and any input signal, which complicates obtaining the answers drastically. A system’s approach, while performing the advanced circuit analysis, focuses on finding the input–output relationship in a circuit. Therefore, this book searches the complete (transient plus steady-state) output in response to the circuit’s excitation by an arbitrary input.1

There are two strategic objectives of this textbook: first, to focus on the fundamentals of advanced circuit analysis with the balance between a systems theoretical approach and the practical concerns in the current technological issues; second, to create a textbook that is not merely a source of information but is an instrument that will teach the readers why real-life engineering problems appear and what are the strategies and techniques for finding their solutions. Let’s discuss the issues outlined above.

Modern electrical engineering technology changes rapidly, whereas its theoretical foundation evolves slower. Thus, finding the right balance between theory and practice is the primary objective of academic courses. Our book offers such a balance by concentrating on the subject’s fundamentals and relating these fundamentals to professional responsibilities through text discussions and—mainly—examples. Such an approach is hardly innovative since many textbooks do this. What makes our book unique is that the examples are not merely the exercises in plugging given numbers into equations but the problems those students will meet in their professional careers. Many examples are woven into the text fabric; those offered in a formal problem–solution format are accompanied by thorough discussions pinpointing the solution’s advantages, drawbacks, limitations, and implications. Thus, our examples serve as essential teaching tools.

Most textbooks traditionally serve as sources of information by introducing physical laws, deriving equations, and explaining how devices and systems work. This function is still valuable, but in the Internet era, when all information is just a click away, its importance is diminishing. Our book, still providing necessary information, teaches the reader why real-life engineering problems surface and how they are solved. We explain the need for a specific task, show possible approaches to meet the challenge, discuss methods to pursue, and consider their possible implementation. In other words, we do not merely present ready-to-implement solutions but encourage our readers to participate in finding and applying them. The objective is to teach our readers the approaches to finding solutions, the skills that remain with professionals throughout their careers regardless of changes in technology.

An engineer’s head is not a warehouse whose shelves an educator must fill with laws, formulas, and instructions on how to do it. Today, all the needed factual information can be easily obtained online, so such an approach to education is a method from the past. What engineers can’t find online is the ability to analyze the situation, formulate the problem, find the optimal solution, and verify the solution’s validity. And they must do all these steps by considering not a single task at hand but the operation of an entire system whose part this task is.

Pedagogical Issues

Discussion of most topics includes three levels of difficulty: basic, introductory, and advanced. This method allows instructors to choose the proper tier for an individual student (personalization) and gives the student a chance to switch among the levels depending on their progress (adaptive learning). Such an approach also gives the instructors the latitude to cover all the material in a single semester if they work with advanced students or present it more leisurely over an entire year.

More often than not, students study new material without having a solid background, and therefore they need to compensate for this deficiency by memorizing facts, equations, and laws. Since we introduce each topic’s basics in the book’s Part 1, students can readily refresh their memory without additional sources.

The textbook shows how a problem arises from a real-life need, what approaches can be taken to tackle the problem, what reasoning and logical steps scientists and engineers take to solve it, and what they do to implement it. Historical notes and short biographies of the greatest scientists and engineers also show the students that the problems discussed in this text stemmed from real-life situations and required tremendous efforts by people who created the technology we enjoy today.

Industry surveys consistently show that one of the significant shortcomings of new college graduates is their inability to see a problem and ask questions. The newly minted professionals frequently take everything for granted and often believe that their responsibilities are to plug given numbers into given equations or follow the instructions when operating with actual circuitry. But, in solving a problem or designing a device or circuit, engineers must ask: What is the solution to the problem? Is this the best solution? To what limits does this approach (equation) work? What could be wrong? How does my solution affect other parts of a system to which my circuit or devices belong? Asking these questions, the engineers would consider all possible situations their device and circuit can meet. This ability is critical for an engineer or technologist, so nurturing this ability is one of our objectives. We typically start every new topic by asking questions about the need for its discussion. Furthermore, questions are included at the end of each subject. In short, we encourage the readers to learn what real-life problems are posed and how to solve them best.

Organization of Our Textbook and Instructional Concerns

The book consists of three parts that are subdivided into ten chapters. Each part covers a specific area—background, time-domain, and frequency-domain—of the advanced circuit analyses. The part comprises several chapters that deepen and broaden the topic, as the table of contents attests. This structure allows the students to start at the primary level and strive for higher and higher levels.

Since almost every chapter is self-sufficient, an instructor can choose the branches to suit an individual class’s needs. The chapters covering the basics of various topics can be merged to create a primary course. This course can be used at a sophomore level at any college, including a community college. Consequently, junior and senior courses can be devised from the introductory and advanced chapters.

The book utilizes several pedagogical devices, such as extensive discussions for all the examples, questions in the text that encourage students to think outside the box, chapter-opening notes, section and chapter summaries, and historical references. Sidebars and Appendixes present auxiliary but essential information. A reader can skip them without breaking the flow of the text mainstream; however, they enhance the book contents and deepen understanding of the material.

Homework problems are based on real-life questions that students will encounter in the workplace. These problems will also require students to comprehend an entire concept, not just solve an equation or understand how a specific circuit works. Such knowledge will help students develop a professional approach to solving practical problems. The assignments also include questions that require essay answers, which will help readers learn how to present their results in writing, a long-lost skill that is in high demand in the industry these days. Notably, the problems and questions not only test the student’s ability to plug numbers into memorized formulas but also gauge their knowledge of theory through its applications to real-world practice. Of course, we include design-oriented problems because we think the design-oriented approach must be the engineer’s hallmark. In addition, many problems in the Questions and Problems sections are, in essence, the assignments for mini-projects.

This text extensively employs MATLAB and Multisim. MATLAB is used to automate the calculations, solve the algebraic, matrix, and differential equations, and plot the graphs. But we have constantly reminded our readers that MATLAB is only a mathematical processing machine, and its outputs (results) are as good as its inputs (our manually derived formulas or calculations). In other words, MATLAB results cannot verify our answers. An independent tool must be exploited to validate the results, and Multisim is the such tool. Hence, Multisim simulations are widely utilized throughout the book. Not only do they verify the results of derivations and calculations, but—even more importantly—they lead to developing laboratory exercises.

The MATLAB and Multisim applications for the laboratory exercises have accompanied my Advanced Circuit Analysis course that I taught for many years, and I transferred my experience into the text, including its examples. As a result, each example can serve as a basis for a laboratory exercise because it contains all the necessary information for the lab. For instance, the examples provide instructions on performing transient circuit analysis...