Equivalent Impedance Transforms

Equivalent Impedance Transforms

An equivalent impedance is an equivalent circuit of an electrical network of impedance elements which presents the same impedance between all pairs of terminals as did the given network. This article describes mathematical transformations between some passive, linear impedance networks commonly found in electronic circuits.

There are a number of very well known and often used equivalent circuits in linear network analysis. These include resistors in series, resistors in parallel and the extension to series and parallel circuits for capacitors, inductors and general impedances. Also well known are the Norton and Thévenin equivalent current generator and voltage generator circuits respectively, as is the Y-Δ transform. None of these are discussed in detail here; the individual linked articles should be consulted.

The number of equivalent circuits that a linear network can be transformed into is unbounded. Even in the most trivial cases this can be seen to be true, for instance, by asking how many different combinations of resistors in parallel are equivalent to a given combined resistor. This article could never hope to be comprehensive, but there are some generalisations possible. Wilhelm Cauer found a transformation that could generate all possible equivalents of a given rational, passive, linear one-port, or in other words, any given two-terminal impedance. Transformations of 4-terminal, especially 2-port, networks are also commonly found and transformations of yet more complex networks are possible.

The vast scale of the topic of equivalent circuits is underscored in a story told by Sidney Darlington. According to Darlington, a large number of equivalent circuits were found by Ronald Foster, following his and George Campbell's 1920 paper on non-dissipative four-ports. In the course of this work they looked at the ways four ports could be interconnected with ideal transformers and maximum power transfer. They found a number of combinations which might have practical applications and asked the AT&T patent department to have them patented. The patent department replied that it was pointless just patenting some of the circuits if a competitor could use an equivalent circuit to get around the patent; they should patent all of them or not bother. Foster therefore set to work calculating every last one of them. He arrived at an enormous total of 83,539 equivalents (577,722 if different output ratios are included). This was too many to patent, so instead the information was released into the public domain in order to prevent any of AT&T's competitors from patenting them in the future.