Alternating Current Circuits
Ed Lipiansky · 2012
This chapter covers the fundamentals of alternating current (AC) circuits. An ideal AC voltage source is one that produces a sinusoidal voltage that varies with time. For the ideal AC voltage source, there is conceptually no difference with respect to the ideal DC source. The key difference is that the AC source supplies a perfectly sinusoidal time varying waveform; which has a peak value or amplitude, a frequency, and a phase angle. When sinusoidal voltage or current sources excite an RLC network, the sinusoidal voltage and current waveforms are of the same angular frequency in sinusoidal steady state. Circuits on sinusoidal steady state draw power from their sinusoidal power source. Dependent sources are widely used to model active circuits like operational amplifiers, transistor-based amplifiers, and transistors such as bipolars and MOSFETs. Controlled Vocabulary Terms AC motors; time-varying networks; voltage control; waveform generators