 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (July 2018) |
Passivity is a property of engineering systems, most commonly encountered in analog electronics and control systems. Typically, analog designers use passivity to refer to incrementally passive components and systems, which are incapable of power gain. In contrast, control systems engineers will use passivity to refer to thermodynamically passive ones, which consume, but do not produce, energy. As such, without context or a qualifier, the term passive is ambiguous.
An electronic circuit consisting entirely of passive components is called a passive circuit, and has the same properties as a passive component.
If a component is not passive, then it is an active component.