Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It all Work (Wiley Series in Pure and Applied Optics) [Hardcover]

Philip C. D. Hobbs (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470402296 | ISBN-13: 978-0470402290 | Publication Date: August 3, 2009 | Edition: 2

Praise for the First Edition

"Now a new laboratory bible for optics researchers has joined the list: it is Phil Hobbs's Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work."
—Tony Siegman, Optics & Photonics News

Building a modern electro-optical instrument may be the most interdisciplinary job in all of engineering. Be it a DVD player or a laboratory one-off, it involves physics, electrical engineering, optical engineering, and computer science interacting in complex ways. This book will help all kinds of technical people sort through the complexity and build electro-optical systems that just work, with maximum insight and minimum trial and error.

Written in an engaging and conversational style, this Second Edition has been updated and expanded over the previous edition to reflect technical advances and a great many conversations with working designers. Key features of this new edition include:

• Expanded coverage of detectors, lasers, photon budgets, signal processing scheme planning, and front ends
• Coverage of everything from basic theory and measurement principles to design debugging and integration of optical and electronic systems
• Supplementary material is available on an ftp site, including an additional chapter on thermal Control and Chapter problems highly relevant to real-world design
• Extensive coverage of high performance optical detection and laser noise cancellation

Each chapter is full of useful lore from the author's years of experience building advanced instruments. For more background, an appendix lists 100 good books in all relevant areas, introductory as well as advanced. Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work, Second Edition is essential reading for researchers, students, and professionals who have systems to build.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hobbs provides a comprehensive overview on the design and construction of electro-optical systems." (Choice, Vol. 38, No. 8, April 2001)

"...scientists, engineers, and anyone else needing help building electro-optical systems will be well aided by this volume...extremely useful...for academic and special libraries supporting programs in electro-optical engineering..." (E-Streams, Vol. 4, No. 9) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

Praise for the First Edition

"Now a new laboratory bible for optics researchers has joined the list: it is Phil Hobbs's Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work."
—Tony Siegman, Optics & Photonics News

Building a modern electro-optical instrument may be the most interdisciplinary job in all of engineering. Be it a DVD player or a laboratory one-off, it involves physics, electrical engineering, optical engineering, and computer science interacting in complex ways. This book will help all kinds of technical people sort through the complexity and build electro-optical systems that just work, with maximum insight and minimum trial and error.

Written in an engaging and conversational style, this Second Edition has been updated and expanded over the previous edition to reflect technical advances and a great many conversations with working designers. Key features of this new edition include:

• Expanded coverage of detectors, lasers, photon budgets, signal processing scheme planning, and front ends
• Coverage of everything from basic theory and measurement principles to design debugging and integration of optical and electronic systems
• Supplementary material is available on an ftp site, including an additional chapter on thermal Control and Chapter problems highly relevant to real-world design
• Extensive coverage of high performance optical detection and laser noise cancellation

Each chapter is full of useful lore from the author's years of experience building advanced instruments. For more background, an appendix lists 100 good books in all relevant areas, introductory as well as advanced. Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work, Second Edition is essential reading for researchers, students, and professionals who have systems to build.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 820 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (August 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470402296
• ISBN-13: 978-0470402290
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Light
  • #14 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Optics

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone working with optical systems, June 23, 2000

By 

Paul Moskowitz (Yorktown, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work (Hardcover)

Phil Hobbs has written an in-depth practical study of the field of optics and electro-optics. The book covers subjects including: sources, detectors, lenses, prisms, mirrors, coatings, gratings and exotic components, fiber optics, electro-optical systems, signal processing, and electronics. It is no surprise that it runs to over 700 pages. It is an excellent reference book for anyone working with optical systems. The material is presented in a straight-forward manner using equations only where they are needed. I wish that I had this book as a graduate student.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Instant Classic, June 14, 2000

By 

John Quinlan (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work (Hardcover)

This book has achieved instant classic status around our electronics and optics labs, and sits prominently on my bookshelf along with Horowitz & Hill, Gray & Meyer, Dostal, Johnson & Graham, some other highly-valued technical texts and app. notes. The amount of knowledge packed into it is truly intimidating. It covers both the electronics and optics parts of electro-optical systems, from the practical perspective of someone who obviously has had a lot of hard-core experience in designing, constructing and "making them work." Besides the basic theory, there are a lot of tricks, techniques and technical lore that I've never seen in other textbooks. As an EE-type thrust into the world of electro-optics when I started a new job, I found the section on low-noise photodiode amplifiers to be particularly valuable. Its common-sense approach to performance and component tradeoffs is the best I've come across.

One warning: this book is not for beginners - it's aimed mostly at the graduate or senior undergraduate level, although an advanced technician would probably gain something from it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best, August 1, 2002

By 

John Lester Miller (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building Electro-Optical Systems: Making It All Work (Hardcover)

When I meet someone new-to-me in the field, I have taken to the habit of eyeing up their bookshelf, looking for the books that they use. Whenever I see this incredible tome from Phil Hobbs, I know they have an excellent resource. Frankly, I believe that you should be embarased if this book is not on your shelf. This book is simply too good to miss. I recommend that you stop reading this review and buy it!

Phil has managed to cram information of a 100,000+ academic pages into this 727 page gem. His mastery of separating the chemicral from the root of the information is truly amazing. This guy understands what it takes to make a system work and astutely put it into this work. He gives pointers for lab rats as to the number of "post-it" notes to use to elevate an optical component, as well as detail theoretical discussions of detector sensitivity and the practical impact of the electronics.

The writing is sometimes folksy and hip. I find this an incredible relief from the academic 3rd person passive forced by many publishers. Phil occasionally gets funny and at least a few times, his folksy style is only used to clearly underscore the salient point that he is making.

My negative criticism of Hobbs is primarily why it took him until 2000 to publish this book---I could have used it 25 years ago, and whis I had this book in college! Also, a glossary would have been nice to include.