14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Informative Book; Not For Beginners, March 21, 2006
This review is from: Demystifying Switched Capacitor Circuits (Demystifying Technology, Vol. 1) (Paperback)
(I reviewed part of the manuscript prior to the publication in April upon authorized requests.) This is an excellent and intuitive analog integrated circuit design handbook for EE students or experienced circuit engineers. It gives readers many tips on designing practical analog MOSFET circuits. However, some of the tips are too advanced for a beginner to comprehend. Thus, do not start this book until you have grasped basic CMOS circuit concepts, which are explained in textbooks by Razavi and Gray. A book that provides intuitive explanations on carefully selected topics rather than plug-and-chugs on everything using piles of equations is always worth buying.
While I am updating my review today (10/15/06), I'd like to refer to a recent review seen in Analog Design (09/06):
"Review of Demystifying Switched-Capacitor Circuits
by Dennis L Feucht
This book covers yet another of those topics that combine digital and analog. Switched-capacitor circuits (SCCs) are a category of sampling circuit in which switches connect and disconnect capacitors, charging and discharging them. In an integrated-circuit context, a diffusion resistor of that high of value would take up much more chip area than two MOSFET switches and a capacitor. Switched-capacitor circuits provide an on-chip alternative. Because the switches are MOSFETs, their characteristics are of some importance. Liu starts Chapter 1 with MOS device physics relevant to switches, then shows (in Chapter 2) how MOSFETs can form basic op-amps, then "Switched-Capacitor Building Blocks" in Chapter 3. Besides the simple SCC shown above, other somewhat clever configurations are presented and the sampling theory worked out for them. This involves, in part, difference equations and z-domain characterizations. Additionally, numerical methods, such as Euler's forward and backward integration formulas, appear, along with the bilinear transform. These alternative formulations for SCCs are given in enough detail for the knowledgeable sampling theorist to appreciate, yet not so much as to lose the attention of the neophyte. Succeeding chapters go into detail on categories of SCCs: filters, DACs and ADCs, dc-dc converters, and delta-sigma (as he calls them) modulators for RF receivers.
The author is from China, did graduate work at Oregon State University under Gabor Temes, and has industrial experience. The latter is evident in the incidental details that appear throughout the book (such as the typical 0.1% matching tolerance of IC capacitors), revealing a working closeness to the subject-matter. The book is not a gloss of the subject but has enough content to be worthy of a place on the engineer's bookshelf.
I mostly liked this book and would recommend it as a working reference for IC designers and others who want to charge and discharge tiny capacitors quickly for a good analog cause. I wish the author would have provided somewhat more explanation in places. Considering that his first language is zhong wen (sorry about the lack of pin yin tonal marks), and his command of English is sufficient, I hope that as his English reaches a greater state of refinement that he will edit the book and do a second edition in the future..."
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth Buying, June 26, 2006
This review is from: Demystifying Switched Capacitor Circuits (Demystifying Technology, Vol. 1) (Paperback)
Bought this book 3 wks ago while traveling in the Bay Area. The book , in my opinion, is well-structured and detail-oriented. The information presented in this book is current and mostly accurate. However, as the author himself has pointed out in the preface: The maths have been minimized, the fact of which seems both good and bad to me: The good thing is that the book is a simple and easy read; but the bad thing is that a few concepts are poorly explained, for example, the sensitivity of a switched-capacitor ladder filter seems delibrately avoided by the author in my view.
Of course, there are quite a few positive points on the other side of the axis, such as the discussion on data converter's resolution in relation to speed and clock jitter, or the anatomy of a dc/dc multiple-gain converter, etc. Thus, despite a couple more disappointing aspects, on the whole, I rate this book a fairly good reference that is worth buying, and more importantly, worth reading/keeping.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good book to buy, May 6, 2006
This review is from: Demystifying Switched Capacitor Circuits (Demystifying Technology, Vol. 1) (Paperback)
I bought this book here. I am a new circuit designer who just finished my master degree in EE. I like this book very much. I found the chap. of switched cap. data converters very helpful; I also gain some insights on switched cap delta-sigma mod through reading the last chap. I sincerely recommend it. It is a good buy.
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