When you are designing an analog circuit, you first check BIAS conditions, i.e., DC Analysis.

This
tells you what would happen if you simply turned the circuit on and applied no signal to it.
Then you do AC analysis to figure out the FREQUENCY RESPONSE of your circuit. Let's take a
microphone amplifier as an example: After figuring out the bias conditions, you know what the
voltage of each NODE in the circuit will be ... Then what ? You will apply a signal to it. In this case,
typically, the node voltages will vary AROUND the biasing (i.e., DC) points. So, the small signal
response of the circuit will be highly dependent on the DC bias points ... Around those bias points,
typically quadratic (or exponential) responses could be simplified as linear, because, the changes
are so small, thereby allowing you to analyze AC response in a simple fashion
(i.e., small signal analysis). The AC analysis allows you to figure out what happens to your circuit
when you apply WELL-BEHAVING AC signals into its input (e.g., a 10mVpp sine wave without
noise).
TRANSIENT ANALYSIS, like Arjuna said, will determine how your circuit will behave under NON-
WELL-BEHAVED signals. It could be a huge peak load, a peak change in the input etc ... If your
circuit starts oscillating and gets unstable under such conditions, then it is not a good circuit ! For
example, IC manufacturers specify how stable an IC is under, say, high capacitive loads. You will
see descriptions such as "no sustained oscillations up to 2 nF capacitive loads." They did a transient
analysis to test for that.

So, all three analyses are very important.
Sep 13, 2013


The DC analysis is important to know, the required power supply and its limits, the current
consumbtion and to be sure that all the devices in the circuit are iworking in the safe region without
exceeding thir normal ratings.
From the AC analysis you can know the circuit bandwidth,low cutoff frequency, the gain, the role-off,
any peaking will show up in the frequency response.
In the time domain you need to make trnsient analysis to measure the rise/fall times, slew rate, draw
the eye diagram to measure many parameters like quality factor.