The Why, the What and the How?

Hello World! Great to see you again. My recent challenge was to build a circuit design environment in a week and this blog documents how I went about doing it. I first thought about it when I started my undergrad and had no idea I would have the honor of attempting to build one soon enough. Firstly, there are tools that would definitely make your life easier but unless you understand them there is no point in using them, which is why I have written this library(if you can call it that) stand-alone, free from any other projects(Licensing is a pain, we are coders right not patent freaks!).Lets begin.

The Why

Frankly speaking, other than the sheer curiosity to see whether I can do it, I have really have none. This project encompasses literally everything I have read so far in my undergrad. Right from Network Analysis, Graphs, Signal Processing, Electronic System Design, Analog Circuits, Algorithms and many more.... Its a project that gives you the satisfaction of climbing a peak and looking back as a tribute to your undergrad days. As you look down you see where the each piece in the puzzle fits and the Ah! moment at that instant is definitely worth grueling for.

                                 

The What

The need for circuit design software/simulation arises when the complexity of the circuits becomes too large for most! human beings to solve by hand. It greatly reduces the time needed for designing products, which is why a lot of companies have invested in it. Circuit simulation can broadly be divided into time domain and frequency domain simulations. The time domain simulation is easier when non-linear circuits are considered since non-linearities are easier to model in time domain than in frequency domain. However, if high-Q circuits typically having responses limited to very narrow frequencies are to be analyzed, a frequency domain simulation greatly improves the efficiency and time taken to complete the analysis. Typically, for microwave circuits where the relative permittivity of the substrate is modelled as a function of frequency(dispersion models), frequency domain simulation is  the only option for the most part. For all these reasons, I decided to implement both the time and frequency domain analysis. 

The How?

Well, hence the Blog, sit back and buckle up.