A technique for simplifying the analysis of signal flowgraph descriptions of electrical networks. Given a source node a and a destination node b, then the total transfer function between the two nodes, accounting for all paths, is given by Mason’s rules to be
where TK is the path gain or total transmittance of the Kth forward path from a to b; Δ = (1 − (sum of all individual loop gains) + (sum of products of loop gains for all possible combinations of two nontouching loops) − (sum of products of loop gains for all possible combinations of three nontouching loops) + …);
ΔK = sum of all terms in Δ not touching the Kth path.
A path is a continuous succession of individual branches passing any node in the network only once. A loop is a path that starts and ends on the same node in the network. Nontouching loops do not share any nodes.