Electrical Engineering Dictionary

RC circuit zero state response.

zero voltage switching (ZVS)

the control

of converter switches such that the switch is
turned on or off only when the voltage across
it is zero at the switching instant. This is
typically achieved through the use of some
form of LC resonance.

zero-address computer

a class of com-

puter based on zero-address instructions.
Stack-based calculators use zero-address
computers and can be programmed using
postfix notation.

zero-address instruction

a class of as-

sembly language ALU instruction in which
the operands are kept on a first-in-first-out
stack in the CPU, and thus require no explicit
addresses.

zero-coefficient sensitivity

analysis tech-

nique used for evaluation of circuit functions
strongly dependent on zero locations (some
bridge circuits and bridge oscillators). Zero-
coefficient sensitivity is introduced in a way
similar to pole-coefficient sensitivity.

zero-error capacity

for a given channel,

the highest information transmission rate,
such that there exists channel codes with de-
coding error probability identically zero. See
also

capacity region

zero-sequence reactance

the reactive

component of the zero sequence impedance.
See also

symmetrical component

zero-sum game

one of a wide class of

noncooperative two-person games in which
the sum of the cost functions of the decision
makers is identically zero. In the zero-sum
games, cooperation between players is im-
possible because the gain of one player is a
loss of the other one. Thus, the game is char-

acterized by only one cost function, which is
minimized by the first player and maximized
by the second one. To the zero-sum game one
could also transform a constant-sum game in
which the sum of the cost functions is con-
stant. The solution in the zero-sum games
has a form of saddle-point equilibrium, and
roughly speaking it exists for problems in
which max and min operations on the cost
function commute. In zero-sum games with-
out equilibrium in pure strategies it is possi-
ble to find saddle point in mixed strategies if
the game is played many times in the same
conditions. The resulting outcomes are aver-
age gains or losses of the players.

zig-zag ground

(1) a grounding arrange-

ment which is used to supply single phase
grounded circuits from an ungrounded three-
phase delta connected electric power line.

(2) the winding arrangement within a

grounding transformer.

zinc oxide arrester

a lightning arrester

that consists of a stack of ZnO disks stacked
within a vented porcelain tube. See

gapless

arrester

zip

a file format and a set of data compres-