Two-Dimensional Inductor-Capacitor Lattice Synthesis

We consider a general class of two-dimensional passive propagation media, represented as a planar graph where nodes are capacitors connected to a common ground and edges are inductors. Capacitances and inductances are fixed in time but vary in space. Kirchhoff’s laws give the time dynamics of voltage and current in the system. By harmonically forcing input nodes and collecting the resulting steady-state signal at output nodes, we obtain a linear, analog device that transforms the inputs to outputs. We pose the lattice synthesis problem: given a linear transformation, find the inductances and capacitances for an inductor-capacitor circuit that can perform this transformation. Formulating this as an optimization problem, we numerically demonstrate its solvability using gradient-based methods. By solving the lattice synthesis problem for various desired transformations, we design several devices that can be used for signal processing and filtering.