Q. Illustrate Breakpoint Analysis?

When a circuit consists of two or more ideal diodes, it will have several distinct operating conditions resulting from the off and on states of the diodes. A systematic way of finding those operating conditions is the method of breakpoint analysis. For a two-terminal network containing resistors, sources, and N ideal diodes, and driven by a source voltage v, the i-v characteristic will in general consist of N + 1 straight-line segments with N breakpoints. The i-v curve can be constructed by following these steps:

1. For v →∞, determine the states of all diodes, and write i in terms of v; do the same for v →-∞.

2. With one diode to be at its breakpoint (i.e., having zero voltage drop and zero current), find the resulting values of i and v at the terminals; do the same for each of the other diodes.

3. Plot the i-v breakpoints obtained from step 2; connect them with straight lines and add the end lines found in step 1.

Note that in step 2, if two or more diodes are simultaneously at breakpoint conditions, the numbers of breakpoints and line segments of the i-v curve are correspondingly reduced.