Electronics Books

"Speaking of Science" is a delight to read. The quotes are taken from a wide variety of sources (Albert Einstein to Mark Twain to Jerry Seinfeld). They are entertaining in themselves, but the wry commentary furnished by the authors adds immensely to the reader's enjoyment. There are the quotes you have heard, plus great quotes that you have probably NEVER heard (my personal favorite is "Is there a woman, whose form is more dazzling, more splendid, than the two locomotives that pass over the Northern Railroad lines?" page 114.) The book is well-researched, well-organized and meticulously documented. Overall, it's a finely crafted work that deserves a place of honor on any engineer's desk.

This book is like a can of peanuts or a bag of potato chips: once you open it, it's hard to put down. The quotes range from the witty to the thought-provoking. Some will make you laugh out loud, others will make you say, "I never looked at it like that." Brief commentaries accompany many of the quotes, providing additional insight. Whether you are a scientist, engineer, or a layman, you will enjoy this book.

Winston Churchill is quoted in this book "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations". It is also a good thing for an educated man as well. I have always enjoyed books of quotations. At last I have one that focuses on the subjects with which I work every day. When I stuck for a phrase or a way to express my thoughts, I can thumb through this book and be sure to find a suitable quote. This book of scientific and engineering quotes is amusing, informative, and much needed.

I found this book to be very clever and amusing. The authors took a fresh approach to the topic of quotations by mixing interesting thoughts from an extremely broad range of sources (from philosophers, scientific greats, and the bible, to cartoon characters). If you choose to use it as a reference, you'll find the book logically broken into subtopics. If you're just looking for an interesting read, you'll find that too. Whether you need the right thing to say in a professional situation, or just want a motivational thought for the day, this is the place to look. I believe you'll enjoy this book as much as I did - and you can quote me on that!

Reading the few introductory chapters, I discovered that this is an easy-to-read book that covers an interesting and evolving area of research. It provides the reader with a "jump- start" to the area of speech coding. Detailed explanations, with a large number of schematics and illustrating diagrams, furnish a vehicle for a fast learning curve.
Nevertheless, the quality of some of these schematics and diagrams need to be revised in future editions. Furthermore, there are some missing notations with some of the curves discussed; such as in Figure 1.14. I would be happy to see the word (Absolute Threshold in dB) on the vertical axis and the (Frequency in Hz) on the horizontal axis instead of AT (f), f.
In spite of these anomalies, I found the book to be deserving of esteem and respect. For me, the most interesting chapters were those covering linear prediction, PCM, algebraic CELP and speech quality assessment.

This books serves as an excellent bridge between speech coding standards and speech coding research publications. It does not seek to cover every existing topic in speech coding, but presents analysis and background of some of the most successful speech coding standards. Many "whys" that come to mind reading those standards are addressed. Carefully compliled illustrations accompany almost every important concept presented. This makes cover-to-cover reading of this book a pleasure.

This is a very good book on speech coding, especially focus on CELP coders. Many kinds of CELP coders are introduced in detail. If you are beginner on speech coding, this book is for you. But other coders, such as MBE and WI, are not presented. So I don't think it is a comprehensive book. I give it 4 stars.

I appreciate very much the amount of figures and simulation results presented in this book; also, the pseudocodes throughout the book helps in the understanding and implementation. In addition, the exercises complement very well with the text. I highly recommend this book to those interested in speech coding.

One thing that I liked about the book was the analysis of specific issues across an entire part of the book. There is a chapter on outsourcing as well. The steps in the book can be carried out in parallel. We have been using the book to lay out our project. The book really gets into business and politics as well as technical issues. The book points out that e-business is a program not a project. Commitment from the bottom of the organization is as important as upper management support. This is an important point that the book makes. Another thing--the book does not assume that you have an ERP. A company used the method that had an ERP and found it very useful, however. The book contains little of the "chain" and business model jargon--thankfully. As an example of common sense, the book suggests that you keep searching for the answer to the question "What is success?" This turns out to be critical in e-business since you gain a better understanding as you work your way through installing e-business. The examples and lessons learned in the book are of real use. They are detailed and specific. We have found that there are also good hints on how to manage vendors and consultants and what the roles of consultants and business departments should be. Overall, an excellent read.

Our firm employed this method to implement business to business e-commerce. It really works. We had tried another approach before which did not work. Some benefits of the method are that it encourages a group approach to implementation. It also provides a way to address political issues which we have many of. I found the book very readable and useful. We are now using the book as the basis for doing intranets within our firm. Chapter 2 presents the idea of a project concept. This is valuable in getting consensus on the scope of the work. Chapter 6 is one of the better ways to understand technology without getting into too much detail. Fitting e-commerce into normal business is important and often not covered in other books. It is covered well in chapter 9. Perhaps, one of the most useful chapters is 12. That is where the implementation strategy is developed. This was a turning point in our effort. You can plan all day, but if you do not have a solid approach for putting e-commerce in, you are going to be in trouble. The book also addresses how to use suppliers in a pilot effort to get other suppliers involved-very useful in political terms. Marketing of e-commerce internally and with suppliers is not given much attention. Here an entire chapter is devoted to it. E-commerce is more complex than most people think. This book provides one of the most useful step by step methods.

I must have purchased 10 different e-commerce books. Typically, they have concepts and buzzwords, but are short on how to implement e-commerce. This is one of the few books that really deal with putting in e-commerce. It gives excellent details about how to implement--from creating a strategy to expanding your site. A best buy.

Rather than portray e-business as a huge effort that will consume everything and will transform the world, this is a solid book on getting down to the nuts and bolts of real world. If most e-business books are geared to business suits and theories, this book is down to working uniforms and getting things done without a lot of people or time. It does not assume that you have some fancy systems or technology or that you are a big company with hundreds of IT people. It can fit start up firms and small firms as well. The book provides a detailed roadmap and tells you how to deal with the pitfalls that you will find along the way. The extensive experience of the authors in doing e-business really shows in this book in the issues, lessons learned, and examples. In using the book we have already used 40 of the guidelines and run across over twenty issues. If you want to do e-business, buy this book. If you want theory and vague concepts go elsewhere.

I used to own this but it went missing at the theatre I worked in. I've been looking around for it since, so it's a shame it's gone out of print.

I remember it being an excellent book at the time and using some of the techniques in the theatre.

My hope is that a more recent one with the same information but maybe more up to date with latest techniques is available.

This is a very good and is recommended by Shure as an excellent source on Stereo microphone techniques. If you can find a cheap used copy get it or find it at the local library.

It's a shame that this book is out of print. Few other "microphone..." books cover types and usage as clearly as Mr. Bartletts'.

A reader can easily find about 70% of the information from other sources, including mixed/wrong information for "free" from web postings. The trick is effective incorporation into your application. Having this volume tucked into a kit bag is a smart way to upgrade your skills or remind yourself of an infrequently used technique.

Although "Stereo Microphone Techniques" is out of print, the exact same information is in my book "Recording Music On Location."
-Bruce Bartlett, authorRecording Music on Location, Second Edition

Solid treatment of techniques. Half a material is repition from Lyons other title. But if you dont have that, its a solid one. Little expensive for its size though.

As a DSP (digital signal processing) practioneer for over 4 decades, I give this book my highest praise. It's an extensive "how-to-do-it" compilation of tips and tricks that lead to efficient processor design. The presentations are lucid and the DSP configurations are well proven and established. This book is a ready reference and is absolutely indispensible to anybody who works in DSP.

Rich is a unique author in the world of engineering writing. Many years ago, when his first book came out, I was so inspired that I found him. Didn't take too much looking, he was local then in the SF Bay area. I had to tell him personally that his book was awesome! (pre-cliche AWESOME!). Well, he himself turned out be as unique as his book!

"Understanding Digital Processing" made such an impression on me that I have been trying to write a book on communications ever since (chapters at complextoreal.com) If all engineering books were written as well as Rich writes them, we would not have so much fear of sciences and math.

Be be honest, I have just ordered this book. It has not arrived yet. BUT, I am sooooo sure, it is going to a great follow-on, as great as the first. - Charan Langton

I wouldn't advise that students of digital signal processing buy this book. It is a well-written and unique tool for the professional, but it will likely not be useful for students unless you are working on some specialized project or Ph.D. and need advanced and specialized help. The tips are well-written, thorough, and well-illustrated. Part one, on efficient digital signal filtering, will be helpful for anyone from novice to professional. The rest of the book, however, deals with specific and complex topics. Quite frankly, Lyon's excellent book "Understanding Digital Signal Processing" includes most of the tips and tricks in part one and is aimed at the novice at an affordable cost. That book is a much better choice for students. I was looking for discussions on implementation of the arctangent function - don't ask me why - and this was the only book that had an accessible section on the subject. It is THAT kind of book. Have your copy of Oppenheim & Schafer's "Discrete-time Signal Processing" handy, though, because in explaining the details of some of these more difficult subjects the background material had to sacrificed for the sake of producing a compact volume that flows well. Highly recommended for the right audience.

Loved the shorthand section and found the Netiquette chapter right on the mark. Grammar and word choice section was also helpful.

A must-have for anyone getting started with writing on the internet.

I use the Grammar and Word Choice section of this book all the time. It has very easy definitions and examples of parts of speech and punctuation. There is a list of commonly misspelled words (properly spelled for you) and the appropriate usage of common confusing words (when to use affect vs effect, anticipate vs expect, discrete vs discreet, and so on). There is also a series of lists of correct abbreviations, for example, academic degrees, professional titles, latin abbreviations, and mailing and state abbreviations.

I point out this section because it may not be evident that there would be such an excellent resource inside an online style guide. But this grammar section is so easy to reference and has very simple examples -- I use it ALL the time! I recommend you buy this book even if all you need it for is common day-to-day writing do's and don'ts.

I admit that because of the publication date being a couple years old, I was skeptical that this reference book would help me. I thought it might be outdated with all the changes in the Internet. While there are some terms that are new since this book was published, and some of the "names" of software or companies have changed, I found the book to still be very useful and surprisingly current. It has helped my editorial team stay consistent with terminology and usage. The grammar section is awesome--great tips that I have shared with our writers! The emoticons are fun. And the netiquette and style sections gave me lots of ideas for our company style guide. I especially appreciate the layout of the book--the tabs make it really easy to find what I need and it lays flat next to the computer--something the others don't. Minor points, maybe. But overall, I rate this a good buy compared to similar books on the market that I've used.

Managing Editor. Find myself reaching for this handy resource daily. Confusing words section (continual/continuous) is a lifesaver. Documentation section helped me meet deadline last week (answered vexing question of how to properly reference a Web site). Emoticons & online shorthand section is a nice surprise. Now I can decipher all those BFN (bye for now) and ;) (wink - light sarcasm). Fun... I've used some of these to get credibility with some of the "techies" I work with.

Overall, Online Style Guide is a winner. Clear, concise writing, conveniently presented (love the section tabs and lay-flat binding). Ordered one for both assistant editors.

Despite I have great experience in other fields, I don't have it in power electronics. I found this book very original and didactic. I gess that his author has a big experience in this matter and hi has also the experience to transmit it. Written in a easy way to understant with a lot of tables, figures and equations, all the subjects are treated very deeply. I think is an useful book for any designer that must deal with power electronics.

I have a lot of switching power supply books but this one is by far the best. The author talks to you like a real person not like a computational robot. He speaks as if he really wants you to learn about switching power supplies not just to show you how much he knows. You can tell that he is very fond of this subject and he wants to share it with you. There are plenty of examples and a FAQ section; yes the math is there as well. You can clear you shelves of all the other books because this is the only one you will need.

I have been trying to find a book that explains in simple text how a feedback loop control works. There are two books that I find useful. One is this book and the other one is 'Practical Design for power supply.' In this book, the author went through close/open loop analysis, compensation network, current mode control, etc. He used a lot of pictorial explaination, which is great, as I don't like to read words :) Also it has a good chapter on switching power lose.

The only draw back that I found is the language used. Sometime I will get confused and have to go back and read it a few times. But other then that, I think you will find this book pretty helpful. Enjoy.

Dear Reader

If you are Power Engineer/ IC Engineer / Applications Engineer entrying the field of Power Electronics, or someone who wants needs to re-educate in the field of power electronics I strongly urge you to keep a copy of this text on your desk.

The author has spent many years gathering precious gems which only exist in the realms of universities or so called experts not willing to share the pitfalls of power design. He and has written the material that anyone who wants a good grasp of power electronics will easily gain.

His chapter on stability is definitely worth its weight in gold. Such topics from the various classic textbooks either suffer the formulae syndrome, or basically the cookbook either leaving the reader, confused or tell me more syndrome. He even explains how the Laplace transform is used without having to go into lengthy math analyis, wow. It took me years to learn this.

This book is written in a straight forward manner you have to go through it chapter by chapter to gain the reap the full benefits.

I wish I had this book many years ago, I could have avoided a lot painful hours of debugging power circuitry.

This is the best book on synchronization in digital communications. The explanations are exceptionally clear and each chapter ends with key points highlighted. Great book for those serious about this topic.

why not have chinese edition? it's an immense market!
for me ,a chinese student,one hundred dollar is too much!

As mentioned in the preface the four areas that differentiate this book from others are (1)only *digital* synchronization is discussed, (2) Maximum Likelihood metric is used throughout, (3) for performance measure the Cramer Rao lower bound is used and (4) in addition to PAM, CPM is considered in detail too.
However, what I like most about this book is (1) its organization where you can directly jump to the chapter of interest with minimum overlap between chapters and (2) its coverage which is very fundamental, deductive and solid, staying away from ad hoc arguments.

This book summarizes authors' works on synchronization in digital comm over the past ten years. There are very few books specifically dedicated to this topic. According to my knowledge, several books on sync are now out of print, and the publication of this book can fill this blank. The most important feature of this book is that it provides valuable information on the sync techniques for continuous-phase modulation (CPM) which will play an improtant role of the next generation of PCS.

Blanchard is a master name on System Engineering and Life Cycle Costs. This books explains many details of such complex sciences helping us keep focused on what really matters. The explanations are easy to understand even for beginners.

I read this book while taking a masters course in system engineering. Over all, the book was clear and written in a format that allowed for self study. This was very helpful for me since my course was primarily online. The material was slightly redundant. The central thesis of the book was the fact that a system engineer needs to conduct the proper upfront planning as well as establish clear processes to ensure successful system development/delivery. The goal of System Engineering is to provide a system that meets the customer's need/requirements. This book introduces how this can be accomplished through a repeated process.
The redundant nature of the text requires a lot of cross reference (page flipping) between chapters in order to match the text description with the figure discussed. The book is more managerial then technical; most laymen will be able to read it without assistance from an instructor. Expanded explanations of reliability engineering as well as ID/prioritization of Technical Performance Measures would have been helpful. This textbook provided a good introduction to the SE process. I highly recommend this text book if you work as a System Engineer or Project Engineer for the Navy or Marines. This book references and will support their standard acquisition process. I give this book 4 of 5 stars.

This book is aimed at the system engineer who is involved in product design and engineering or involved in government contracting and must produce system engineering management plans (SEMPs). It is also applicable to organizations who have or are planning to use the capability maturity model (CMM) to improve their effectiveness. For the intended audience this book is both comprehensive and complete. There are eight chapters, each followed by case studies, questions and problems, and six appendices.

It starts with a foundation of the basics, such as definitions, system engineering life cycle, analysis and concurrent engineering. It then builds upon this foundation by addressing all of the elements of a well-managed system engineering program: integrated product and process development, TQM, configuration management, support and logistics. Each element is discussed in detail and placed into the context of a total system engineering environment.

The chapter on system design requirements is particularly complete and covers every facet of this discipline, including reliability, maintainability, safety, software, etc. There is a lot of good material here, which is reinforced by the next chapter that covers design tools and methods. The design process is concluded by a chapter on design review and evaluation, which is a foundation of good quality practices as well as a well-written SEMP.

The real heart of the book starts in chapter 6, which covers SE program planing. It covers program requirements, the SEMP itself and provides a statement of work. It then provides a complete work breakdown structure for implementing system engineering functions and tasks. This chapter provides a risk management plan that is well thought out and serves as an excellent template. It also addresses the CMM for systems engineering. Much of this material has been superseded by the Software Engineering Institute's CMMI that now covers system engineering, software engineering and integrated product and process development. This is not a problem because the book's coverage of the CMM-SE is consistent with the material in the CMMI.

The final two chapters, addressing system engineering organization and supplier/sub contractor management are to the point and contains a lot of valuable information.

Had the author provided this book in soft copy on an accompanying diskette or CD ROM it would be a best seller on the Beltway because of the time it would save in developing a company-wide system engineering procedure manual.

Consulting companies and IT departments would also greatly benefit from this book because of the structured approach it provides for planning and managing system integration. Unlike their cousins in the government contracting and CMM domains, they generally approach system engineering and integration in a loose fashion that too often results in cost and schedule overruns, or project cancellation. By following the approach outlined in this book consulting companies and IT departments would find that technical, cost and schedule risks would be identified early and controlled, and that the design, integration and implementation of complex systems would enjoy a higher rate of success. This is especially true when multiple vendors are involved in an integration project - the material in chapters 1 (integrated process teams) and 8 (subcontractor management) provides a foundation for managing cross-functional teams. Therefore, I strongly recommend this book for engagement and project managers, and program management offices run by consulting companies and/or IT departments.

This book (or something similar) really should be required for anyone graduating with an engineering degree who intends to work in industry.

Systems engineering is essentially the function that oversees any design effort to ensure that the resulting design does what it's supposed to. As such requirements are the bread and butter of systems engineering. The most visible job of the system engineer then is to turn the customer's desires into functional requirements, and then turn those requirements into something that can be designed to based on the system architecture the designers / system engineers prefer.

For example, consider if you have a city with a river through it and the local government wants to develop a system to carry cars across the river. The system engineer would first turn that desire into functional requirements. These would include requirements like: No. of cars per hour that can transit, can't interfere with riverborne ship traffic, growth in traffic that can be absorbed etc. From this you have something that you can verify design concepts against to see if they satisfy the customer desires, but actually can't pull out the ruler and calculators just yet. Systems engineers / designers would then consider options like a suspension bridge, a ferry system, or a tunnel beneath the river. Each of these system options would have their own architectures and the functional requirements would have to be translated into different design requirements for each. The bridge would have to be so high to allow ship traffic and have so many lanes and bear so much live weight. The ferry system would need so many ferries of such and such a carrying capacity. The tunnel would have to have so many lanes, would require such and such a ventilation capacity, etc. The systems engineer would be involved in determining which of these architectures would best suit customer needs, and then turn the functional requirements into the design to requirements so design work can begin in earnest.

Of course as design work continues and large components are broken down into smaller and smaller design components the systems engineer continues to guide the choice of how to configure the lower tier of design components, and to allocate design to requirements for them. If the system engineer has done their job right when all the design components are integrated into each other the resulting system really does what it was intended to do and meets the functional requirements.

This book tells you in a very clear, completely comprehensive, and extremely well laid out manner how to do this. It also tells you why you should do this, and how it is beneficial. The writing is straightforward, always to the point, and easily understood. The topic is pertinent and can help you understand how systems are actually engineered in the real world, a very rare and very appreciated breath of fresh air in engineering textbooks.

The author also covers all the aspects of systems engineering planning, including scheduling, budgeting, contracting, and system verification / validation, etc. Systems engineering is largely a management function so this information is interesting and necessary for the subject.

This book will be extremely helpful for engineers of any stripe who want to put their work into context, systems engineers for how to do what their supposed to do, and for contractors and government purchasers to implement processes to guarantee that they get a system that does what they want. (Provided what they want is feasible of course!)

Certainly recommended and a book that I use frequently for reference.

I highly recommend this text. Very clear, excellent examples and good coverage of the key topics of Modern Automatic (Optimal) Control.

This book covers a wide area of topics in systems and control theory and applications. In addition to the analysis of stability and optimal control in linear and nonlinear systems, the text provides a very good introduction to fuzzy systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms and chaotic systems. As the author states, the scope of the topics presented tries to emphasize the multidisciplinary role of nonlinear dynamics and control. By providing examples where the techniques of fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and neural networks are used in real life control problems, it is shown how these new approaches complement the classical ones. To this end, Lyapunov's stability theory is employed as the common medium of analysis. This type of presentation facilitates a deeper understanding of the material by bringing the focus of different areas in the context of control and stability problem.
The book is well suited for senior or graduate course work and its comprehensive nature makes it also an excellent reference text for people who are interested in dynamical systems and control theory. A basic knowledge of linear algebra and calculus would be sufficient to understand most of the material covered and a brief mathematical background review is provided in the appendix. The fundamental concepts and how they relate to each other are clearly presented. The detailed worked out examples, taken mostly from literature or practical applications, form an integral part of the book and in some cases, used as a means to illustrate the theory itself. Many exercises, some involving software projects in MATLAB, are also provided at the end of each chapter.
This text offers a thorough and practical treatment of systems and control and provides a solid foundation for anyone in the field and is highly recommended.

The important link between modeling and control of dynamical systems is once more emphasized in "Systems & Control" by Stanislaw H. Zak. The book is an excellent addition to the control literature as it revisits the mathematical modeling and analysis problems of dynamical systems while addressing the controller design problem by means of a variety of modern techniques.

Chapter 1 introduces the notion of a system and includes numerous examples illustrating the mathematical modeling of dynamical systems by ordinary differential equations. Chapter 2 is devoted to the analysis and approximate solution techniques of the model equations using phase-portraits, numerical methods, linearization and describing functions. Chapter 3 discusses the linear systems and serves as a warm-up for the nonlinear control methods to be addressed in the subsequent
chapters. Chapter 4 presents a thorough stability analysis as well as the essentials of the Lyapunov theory for both linear and nonlinear systems. With a section on the stabilizing state-feedback controllers, the reader also gets acquainted with the controller design based on the Lyapunov theory. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the optimal control of the dynamical systems. Especially, the section titled "A Glimpse at the Calculus of Variations" is very helpful in the sense that it equips the reader with the necessary tools required for the rest of the chapter. Variable structure systems are discussed and the design of sliding mode controllers is illustrated in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, a combined controller-estimator compensator is designed for a class of dynamical systems using Lie derivatives and the vector field methods. Chapter 8 provides a comprehensive discussion of fuzzy logic and illustrates novel control strategies by fuzzy models including stabilizing and adaptive controllers. Chapter 9 is devoted to the study of neural networks from a dynamical system point of view. Genetic and evolutionary algorithms are studied in Chapter 10. Tracking control of a vehicle is accomplished by using an evolutionary fuzzy logic controller. Chapter 11 discusses the chaotic systems and fractals. The control of chaotic systems is also illustrated by an example in this chapter. An appendix on the essentials of mathematical background complements the material presented in this book.

The book is written in a textbook format and makes use of an understandable notation. It is well structured and the presentation is easy to follow making it useful as an upper level undergraduate or graduate level text. It will also be beneficial to researchers and practicing engineers as it covers the state-of-the-art control techniques. Each chapter is accompanied by a variety of examples and exercises to illustrate the applicability of the methods discussed. The book uses MATLAB/SIMULINK as a tool to provide a unifying environment for simulation purposes. With its extensive coverage of the current literature, it also serves as a reference book. The most powerful aspect of this book is that it establishes a bridge between the classical control problems and the most recent trends in control engineering. In conclusion, "Systems & Control" will be a valuable addition to the libraries of those interested in control of dynamical systems.

This book covers a wide area of topics in systems and control theory and applications. In addition to the analysis of stability and optimal control in linear and nonlinear systems, the text provides a very good introduction to fuzzy systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms and chaotic systems. As the author states, the scope of the topics presented tries to emphasize the multidisciplinary role of nonlinear dynamics and control. By providing examples where the techniques of fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and neural networks are used in real life control problems, it is shown how these new approaches complement the classical ones. To this end, Lyapunov's stability theory is employed as the common medium of analysis. This type of presentation facilitates a deeper understanding of the material by bringing the focus of different areas in the context of control and stability problem.
The book is well suited for senior or graduate course work and its comprehensive nature makes it also an excellent reference text for people who are interested in dynamical systems and control theory. A basic knowledge of linear algebra and calculus would be sufficient to understand most of the material covered and a brief mathematical background review is provided in the appendix. The fundamental concepts and how they relate to each other are clearly presented. The detailed worked out examples, taken mostly from literature or practical applications, form an integral part of the book and in some cases, used as a means to illustrate the theory itself. Many exercises, some involving software projects in MATLAB, are also provided at the end of each chapter.
This text offers a thorough and practical treatment of systems and control and provides a solid foundation for anyone in the field and is highly recommended.