Ladder Network

a network consisting of circuit elements connected in series and in parallel. The circuit elements may be resistors, inductance coils, or capacitors.

A ladder network may be described as a cascade connection of a series of symmetrical T-section or pi-section four-terminal networks. If all the four-terminal networks are identical, the ladder network is said to be homogeneous; if the four-terminal networks are not identical, the ladder network is called inhomogeneous. The most widely used ladder networks are homogeneous ladder networks, which may be employed to model both electrical and nonelectrical systems with distributed parameters, for example, power lines, wave guides, and pipelines.

Ladder networks may be used to calculate the voltage distribution in insulator strings and in the windings of electric machines and transformers. They may also be employed to compute the pressure distribution in mechanical and thermal systems with distributed parameters.

Ladder networks composed of reactive elements, such as inductance coils and capacitors, are used as artificial delay lines, in which the output signal lags behind the input signal; in such delay lines, the delay time is determined by the network parameters. Ladder networks are also employed as electric filters.