A procedure for the computation of accurate PWL approximations of nonlinear dynamical systems

In this paper we propose a variational method to find out piecewise-linear (PWL) approximations of non-linear dynamical systems in view of their circuit implementations. The method is based on some significant trajectories of the dynamical system and provides reasonably accurate PWL approximations with a relatively low number of parameters. The effectiveness of the method is validated by applying it to the approximation of limit cycles (both stable and unstable) in the Bautin system.