Analysis of Electrical Circuits with Controlled Sources through the Principle of Superposition

Abstract— In the text books, while solving the circuits with controlled sources using Principle of Superposition (POS), controlled sources are not deactivated. Thus POS has not been applied in the ‘true sense’ to circuits with dependent sources. It is shown here that POS can be applied in the ‘true sense’ to such circuits also, but with caution. POS is applicable to all those circuits with dependent sources as well, if it is applicable to these circuits when all the dependent sources are treated as independent sources. We have included two such examples: one which cannot be solved only employing series-parallel reduction, current voltage division, and Ohm’s law, second which has more than one controlled sources. The method based on POS is compared with that based on Miller equivalents and generalized matrix method. It is shown that the latter one is the most efficient. It is hoped that the teachers will emphasize that POS can be applied, in the true sense, for analysing circuits with controlled sources. The prospective authors would include this theory in their future text books. However, they should motivate the students to use generalized matrix method for better efficiency.