The
Phasor is an extremely important concept in
engineering analysis. It provides a very
convenient and
compact representation of
steady-state,
single-frequency,
sinusoidally varying waveforms.
Assume that some waveform is of the form:
v(t) = A * cos(wt + Θ)
or since e j X = cos(X) + j * sin(X)
v(t) = Real ( A * e j(wt + Θ) )
In linear systems, any system that has a forcing fuction which follows the form of v(t) from above will also have solutions which contain the exponential term e jwt. This term is typically removed from the equations for simplicity sake; the remaining term, containing the phase angle of the particular waveform, e j Θ, is kept. This remaining term is called a Phasor.
Phasors are immensely useful since they may be represented vectorially in the complex plane, i.e.
v(t) = e j Θ = cos(Θ) + j * sin(Θ)
An additions and subtractions of Phasors may be carried out in a vector fashion.