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An electronic circuit is an electrical circuit that also contains active electronic devices such as transistors or vacuum tubes.

Electronic circuits can display highly complex behaviors, even though they are governed by the same laws as simple electrical circuits.

Electronic circuits can usually be categorized as analog, digital, or mixed-signal (a combination of analog and digital) electronic circuits.

Analog electronic circuits are those in which electric signals vary continuously to correspond to the information being represented. Electronic equipment like voltage amplifiers, power amplifiers, tuning circuits, radios, and televisions are largely analog (with the exception of their control sections, which may be digital, especially in modern units).

The basic units of analog circuits are passive (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and active (independent power sources and dependent power sources). Components such as transistors may be represented by a model containing passive components and dependent sources. Another classification is to take impedance and independent sources and opamp as basic electronic components; this allows us to model frequency dependent negative resistors, gyrators, negative impedance converters, and dependent sources as secondary electronic components. alisha

In digital electronic circuits, electric signals take on discrete values to represent logical and numeric values that represent the information to be processed. Transistors are used primarily as switches to make logic gates. Examples of electronic equipment which use digital circuits include digital wristwatches, calculators and PDAs, and microprocessors.

Mixed-signal or hybrid circuits contain elements of both analog and digital circuits. Examples include comparators, timers, PLLs, ADCs (analog-to-digital converters), and DACs (digital-to-analog converters).

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