5 ms·

I didn't know communication networks could be described with resistors. Are inductors, diodes, and voltage sources also relevant? How far does this go and why w

• uoaei 5y ago
  [1] has a potential use case. Resistor networks are handy when modeling divergence-free flows through arbitrary networks with linear "costs" from a predefined origin to a predefined destination. Kirchoff's law and Ohm's law makes things linear, and turning the optimization problem into a linear problem is very advantageous for efficiency. Diodes are asymmetric resistors with R=0 for one direction and R=inf for the other, so represent one-way streets in the network. A voltage source would be how you define the origin location (destination location is set at ground) for recognizing different routes for flows to take. Inductors are out of scope I think since this should find the equilibrium for voltages at each node and currents across each resistor and inductors' dynamics are only interesting over time. [1] https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/02/robust-routing-using-electrical-flows.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/02/robust-routing-using-elect...