The Potential Analogue Method of Network Synthesis

A general method is developed for designing networks with assigned gain or phase characteristics. It is based on the analogy between the gain and phase of linear networks and two-dimensional potential and stream functions, produced by charges corresponding to the network singularities. These analogies exist because the gain and phase functions are the real and imaginary parts of analytic functions of a complex frequency variable. Potential theory is used here to determine charge arrays which correspond to physical network singularities and also yield approximations to assigned potential or stream functions.