ABSTRACT
An important goal in circuit design is to control and keep to a sufficiently low level the sensitivities of circuit responses with respect to the parameters of circuit elements. To provide the engineer with sensitivity analysis it is usually implemented in general-purpose circuit simulators. PSPICE 5.02 enables the user to calculate the sensitivities of selected d.c. responses with respect to all circuit parameters. SPICE3 also offers sensitivity analysis in the time and frequency domains. This chapter considers static circuits those described by algebraic equations. This case comprises linear and nonlinear circuits in steady state under d.c. excitations, or small-signal a.c. excitations. In the d.c. case, a circuit is described by means of real nonlinear algebraic equations. To discuss the incremental method of sensitivity analysis one can consider a general static circuit represented by means of canonical equations. The incremental equations method can be used for a.c. sensitivity analysis of linear circuits and d.c. sensitivity analysis of linear and nonlinear circuits.
