Appendix

PSpice from OrCAD (previously MicroSim) is a circuit simulator from the Spice family (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) for the simulation of analog, digital, and mixed analog/digital circuits. In 1970 Spice was developed at Berkely University and is available today in the version 3F5 for use without licence. On this basis, commercial offshoots evolved which contain specific expansions and additional modules for entering circuits graphically, presenting results and controlling processes. The most common ones are PSpice and HSpice. While HSpice from Synopsys (previously Meta Software) was designed for developing integrated circuits comprising several thousand transistors and is used in many IC design systems as the simulator, PSpice is a particularly well-priced and easy to operate simulation environment for developing small and medium-sized circuits on PCs with a Microsoft Windows operating system.