From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Electrical impedance, or simply impedance, is a
measure of opposition to a
sinusoidal
alternating
electric current. The concept of electrical impedance
generalizes
Ohm's law to AC circuit analysis. Unlike
electrical resistance, the impedance of an
electric circuit can be a
complex number, but the same unit, the
ohm, is used for both quantities.
Oliver Heaviside coined the term "impedance" in July of
1886.

Impedances in a circuit can be drawn either as boxes
(IEC and European standards) or as zig-zags (US and
Japan).
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Contents
-
1
AC steady state
-
2
Definition of electrical
impedance
-
3
Impedance of different devices
-
4
Reactance
-
5
Combining impedances
-
5.1
In series
-
5.2
In parallel
-
6
Circuits with general sources
-
7
Magnitude and phase of
impedance
-
8
Peak phasor versus rms phasor
-
9
Matched impedances
-
10
Inverse quantities
-
11
Origin of impedances
-
12
Analogous impedances
-
12.1
Electromagnetic impedance
-
12.2
Acoustic impedance
-
12.3
Data-transfer impedance
-
13
Application to physical
devices
-
14
See also
-
15
External links
-
16
References
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AC steady state
In general, the solutions for the voltages and currents in a
circuit containing
resistors,
capacitors and
inductors (in short, all linearly behaving components) are
solutions to a linear
ordinary differential equation. It can be shown that if the
voltage and current sources in the circuit are sinusoidal and of
constant frequency, the solutions take a form referred to as AC
steady state. Thus, all of the voltages and currents in the
circuit are sinusoidal and have constant amplitude, frequency
and phase.
In AC steady state, v(t) is a sinusoidal function of time
with constant
amplitude Vp, constant frequency f, and constant phase
:
-
where
- j represents the
imaginary unit (
)
-
means the
real part of the complex number z.
The
phasor representation of v(t) is the constant
complex number V:
-
For a circuit in AC steady state, all of the voltages and
currents in the circuit have phasor representations as long as
all the sources are of the same frequency. That is, each voltage
and current can be represented as a constant complex number. For
DC circuit analysis, each voltage and current is represented
by a constant
real number. Thus, it is reasonable to suppose that the
rules developed for DC circuit analysis can be used for AC
circuit analysis by using complex numbers instead of real
numbers.
Definition of electrical impedance
The impedance of a circuit element is defined as the ratio of
the phasor voltage across the element to the phasor current
through the element:
-
It should be noted that although Z is the ratio of two
phasors, Z is not itself a phasor. That is, Z is not associated
with some sinusoidal function of time.
For DC circuits, the resistance is defined by Ohm's law to be
the ratio of the DC voltage across the resistor to the DC
current through the resistor:
-
where
- VR and
IR above are
DC (constant real) values.
Just as Ohm's law is generalized to AC circuits through the
use of phasors, other results from DC circuit analysis such as
voltage division,
current division,
Thevenin's theorem, and
Norton's theorem generalize to AC circuits.
The electric impedance is equal to:
-
,
where
-
is the real part of the complex electric impedance, and
-
is the imaginary part of the complex electric impedance.
Impedance of different devices
For a resistor:
-
For a capacitor:
-
For an inductor:
-
For derivations, see
Impedance of different devices (derivations).
Reactance
-
Main article:
Reactance
The term reactance refers to the imaginary part of the
impedance. Some examples:
A resistor's impedance is R (its resistance)
and its reactance is 0.
A capacitor's impedance is j (-1/ωC) and its
reactance is -1/ωC.
An inductor's impedance is j ω L and its
reactance is ω L.
It is important to note that the impedance of a capacitor or
an inductor is a function of the frequency ω and is an
imaginary quantity - however is certainly a real physical
phenomenon relating the shift in phases between the voltage and
current phasors due to the existence of the capacitor or
inductor. Earlier it was shown that the impedance of a resistor
is constant and real, in other words a resistor does not cause a
phase shift between voltage and current as do capacitors and
inductors.
When resistors, capacitors, and inductors are combined in an
AC circuit, the impedances of the individual components can be
combined in the same way that the resistances are combined in a
DC circuit. The resulting equivalent impedance is in general, a
complex quantity. That is, the equivalent impedance has a real
part and an imaginary part. The real part is denoted with an R
and the imaginary part is denoted with an X. Thus:
-
where
- Req is
termed the resistive part of the impedance
- Xeq is
termed the reactive part of the impedance.
It is therefore common to refer to a capacitor or an inductor
as a reactance or equivalently, a reactive
component (circuit element). Additionally, the impedance for a
capacitance is negative imaginary while the impedance for an
inductor is positive imaginary. Thus, a capacitive reactance
refers to a negative reactance while an inductive reactance
refers to a positive reactance.
A reactive component is distinguished by the fact that the
sinusoidal voltage across the component is in quadrature with
the sinusoidal current through the component. This implies that
the component alternately absorbs energy from the circuit and
then returns energy to the circuit. That is, unlike a
resistance, a reactance does not dissipate power.
It is instructive to determine the value of the capacitive
reactance at the frequency extremes. As the frequency approaches
zero, the capacitive reactance grows without bound so that a
capacitor approaches an open circuit for very low frequency
sinusoidal sources. As the frequency increases, the capacitive
reactance approaches zero so that a capacitor approaches a short
circuit for very high frequency sinusoidal sources.
Conversely, the inductive reactance approaches zero as the
frequency approaches zero so that an inductor approaches a short
circuit for very low frequency sinusoidal sources. As the
frequency increases, the inductive reactance increases so that
an inductor approaches an open circuit for very high frequency
sinusoidal sources.
Combining impedances
-
Main article:
Series and parallel circuits
Combining impedances in series, parallel, or in delta-wye
configurations, is the same as for resistors. The difference is
that combining impedances involves manipulation of complex
numbers.
In series
Combining impedances in series is simple:
-
In parallel
Combining impedances in parallel is much more difficult than
combining simple properties like resistance or capacitance, due
to a multiplication term.
-
In rationalized form the equivalent resistance is:
-
-
-
Circuits with general sources
Impedance is defined by the ratio of two phasors where a
phasor is the complex peak amplitude of a sinusoidal function of
time. For more general
periodic sources and even
non-periodic sources, the concept of impedance can still be
used. It can be shown that virtually all periodic functions of
time can be represented by a
Fourier series. Thus, a general periodic voltage source can
be thought of as a (possibly infinite) series combination of
sinusoidal voltage sources. Likewise, a general periodic current
source can be thought of as a (possibly infinite) parallel
combination of sinusoidal current sources.
Using the technique of
Superposition, each source is activated one at a time and an
AC circuit solution is found using the impedances calculated for
the frequency of that particular source. The final solutions for
the voltages and currents in the circuit are computed as sums of
the terms calculated for each individual source. However, it is
important to note that the actual voltages and currents in the
circuit do not have a phasor representation. Phasors can be
added together only when each represents a time function of the
same frequency. Thus, the phasor voltages and currents
that are calculated for each particular source must be converted
back to their time domain representation before the final
summation takes place.
This method can be generalized to non-periodic sources where
the discrete sums are replaced by integrals. That is, a
Fourier transform is used in place of the Fourier series.
Magnitude and phase of impedance
Complex numbers are commonly expressed in two distinct forms.
The
rectangular form is simply the sum of the real part with the
product of j and the imaginary part:
-
The
polar form of a complex number the
real magnitude of the number multiplied by the
complex phase. This can be written with exponentials,
or in
phasor notation:
-
where
-
is the magnitude of Z (Z* denotes the
complex conjugate of Z), and
-
is the angle.
Peak phasor versus rms phasor
A sinusoidal voltage or current has a peak amplitude value as
well as an
rms
(root mean square) value. It can be shown that the rms value of
a sinusoidal voltage or current is given by:
-
-
In many cases of AC analysis, the rms value of a sinusoid is
more useful than the peak value. For example, to determine the
amount of power dissipated by a resistor due to a sinusoidal
current, the rms value of the current must be known. For this
reason, phasor voltage and current sources are often specified
as an rms phasor. That is, the magnitude of the phasor is the
rms value of the associated sinusoid rather than the peak
amplitude. Generally, rms phasors are used in electrical power
engineering whereas peak phasors are often used in low-power
circuit analysis.
In any event, the impedance is clearly the same. Whether peak
phasors or rms phasors are used, the scaling factor cancels out
when the ratio of the phasors is taken.
Matched impedances
-
Main article:
Impedance matching
When fitting components together to carry
electromagnetic
signals, it is important to match impedance, which can be
achieved with various matching devices. Failing to do so is
known as
impedance mismatch and results in signal loss and
reflections. The existence of reflections allows the use of
a
time-domain reflectometer to locate mismatches in a
transmission system.
For example, a conventional
radio frequency
antenna for carrying broadcast
television in North America was standardized to 300 ohms,
using balanced, unshielded, flat wiring. However
cable television systems introduced the use of 75 ohm
unbalanced, shielded, circular wiring, which could not be
plugged into most TV sets of the era. To use the newer wiring on
an older TV, small devices known as
baluns were widely available. Today most TVs simply
standardize on 75 ohm feeds instead.
Inverse quantities
The reciprocal of a non-reactive resistance is called
conductance. Similarly, the reciprocal of an impedance is
called
admittance. The conductance is the real part of the
admittance, and the imaginary part is called the
susceptance. Conductance and susceptance are not the
reciprocals of resistance and reactance in general, but only for
impedances that are purely resistive or purely reactive; in the
latter case a change of sign is required.
Origin of impedances
The origin of j was found by calculating an electrical
circuit by the direct method, without using impedances or
phasors. The circuit is formed by a
resistance an
inductance and a
capacitor in series The circuit is connected to a
sinusoidal voltage source and we have waited long enough so
that all the transitory phenomena have faded away. It is now in
steady sinusoidal state. As the system is linear, the steady
state current will be also sinusoidal and of the same frequency
of the voltage source. The only two quantities that we ignore
are the amplitude of the current and its phase relative to the
voltage source. If the voltage source is
the current will be of the form
,
where
is the relative phase of the current, which is unknown. The
equation of the circuit is:
-
where
-
,
and
are the voltages across the resistance, the inductance and
the capacitor.
-
is equal to
The definition of inductance says:
-
.
The definition of capacitance says that
.
It is easy to verify (taking the expression derivative) that:
-
.
Then the equation to solve is:
-
That is, we have to find the two values
and
that makes this equation true for all values of time
.
To do this, another circuit must be considered, identical to
the former and fed by a voltage source whose only difference
with the former is that it started with a lag of a quarter of a
period. The voltage of this source is
.
The current in this circuit will be the same as in the former
one but for a lag of a quarter of period:
-
.
The voltage is given by:
-
Some of the signs have changed because a cosine becomes a
sine, and a sine becomes a negative cosine.
The first equation is added with the second one multiplied by
j, to try to replace expressions with the form
by
,
using the les
Euler's formula. This gives:
-
-
As
is not zero we can divide all the equation by this factor:
-
-
This gives:
-
-
The left side of the equation contains the two values we are
trying to deduce: the modulus and the phase of the current. The
amplitude is the
modulus of the complex number at the right and its phase is
the
argument of the complex number at the right.
The formula at right is the habitual formula which is written
when doing circuit equations using phasors and impedances. The
denominator of the equation is the impedances of the resistance,
inductor and capacitor.
Even though the formula
-
-
contains imaginary parts, at least some of the imaginary
numbers will become real in the circuit (j*j = -1), which means
that the previously stated formula can not be simplified
to just
-
-
Analogous impedances
Electromagnetic impedance
In problems of
electromagnetic wave propagation in a homogeneous medium,
the intrinsic impedance of the medium is defined as:
-
where
- μ and ε are the
permeability and
permittivity of the medium, respectively.
Acoustic impedance
-
Main article:
Acoustic impedance
In complete analogy to the electrical impedance discussed
here, one also defines
acoustic impedance, a complex number which describes how a
medium absorbs sound by relating the amplitude and phase of an
applied sound pressure to the amplitude and phase of the
resulting sound flux.
Data-transfer impedance
Another analogous coinage is the use of impedance by
computer programmers to describe how easy or difficult it is
to pass data and flow of control between parts of a system,
commonly ones written in different languages. The common usage
is to describe two programs or languages/environments as having
a low or high
impedance mismatch.
Application to physical devices
Note that the equations above only apply to theoretical
devices. Real resistors, capacitors, and inductors are more
complex and each one may be modeled as a network of theoretical
resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Rated impedances of real
devices are actually
nominal impedances, and are only accurate for a narrow
frequency range, and are typically less accurate for higher
frequencies. Even within its rated range, an inductor's
resistance may be non-zero. Above the rated frequencies,
resistors become inductive (power resistors more so), capacitors
and inductors may become more resistive. The relationship
between frequency and impedance may not even be linear outside
of the device's rated range.
See also
-
Antenna tuner
-
Characteristic impedance
-
Balance return loss
-
Balancing network
-
Bridging loss
-
Damping factor
-
Electrical characteristics of a dynamic loudspeaker
-
Electromagnetic impedance
-
Forward echo
-
Harmonic oscillator
-
Impedance bridging
-
Impedance cardiography
-
Impedance matching
-
Loading
-
Log-periodic antenna
-
Physical constants
-
Reflection coefficient
-
Reflection loss,
Reflection (electrical)
-
Resonance
-
Return loss
-
Sensitivity
-
Signal reflection
-
Smith chart
-
Standing wave
-
Time-domain reflectometer
-
Voltage standing wave ratio
-
Wave impedance
-
Reactance
-
Inductance
-
nominal impedance
-
Mechanical impedance
External links
-
Explaining Impedance
-
Fundamentals of Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy
-
Potentiodynamic Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy
References
[1] Pohl R. W., Electrizitätslehre,
Berlin-Göttingen-Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1960. [2] Popov V.
P., The Principles of Theory of Circuits, – M.: Higher
School, 1985, 496 p. (In Russian). [3] Küpfmüller K.,
Einführung in die theoretische Elektrotechnik,
Springer-Verlag, 1959.
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