Customer Reviews

Transistor Circuit Techniques: Discrete and Integrated (Tutorial Guides in Electronic Engineering)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My experience has been that books published for a UK audience often tend to be somewhat more "application" focused than those books aimed at a U.S. audience, and this book is no exception: While it does have all the standard small signal theory about transistors that you find in pretty much any electronics text, it also has entire chapters on practical (1) audio amplifier and (2) power supply design, which is not the kind of thing you'd expect to find in most electronics texts. This is really great, particularly for those who are using this book on their own (outside of a classroom environment) -- the gap between "theory" and "practice" is much reduced. Additionally, there are answers to every single practice problem (usually about a dozen per chapter) in the back of the book, which makes it ideal for self-study.

A few quick comparisons:

Sedra & Smith, Microelectronic Circuits: S&S is a classic book (and very popular at U.S. colleges). It covers everything this book does, typically in far greater depth and at a much more theoretical level: S&S assume you know a bit of calculus and have covered Laplace transforms (or at least the use of phasors), whereas this books requires little more than high school algebra to fully understand. I do think S&S works fine in a classroom environment, but would not recommend it for self-study. On the other hand, after reading this book, S&S would be a fine reference.

Horowitz & Hill, The Art of Electronics: TAoE has nearly religious significance to some, and for good reason -- it transcends many, many different areas of circuit design (everything in this book plus microcontrollers, much fancier amplifier applications, low noise/high speed design, and even a bit of fabrication), and (like this book) tries to avoid the need for anything behind high school math (sometimes it just isn't possible, though). However, H&H specifically avoids "traditional" small signal models, and while I can understand the desire to do this, I sometimes think it hampers one's intuition if you haven't gone through a few rounds of standard circuit analysis with those models. As such, reading this book *before* H&H will, in my opinion, let you have a greater appreciation for the genius that H&H demonstrate in their own tome. (One common complaint you hear about H&H is that they have sections of "bad circuit ideas" -- which is great -- but for beginners sometimes one just doesn't have the background or skill to figure out WHY they're bad, and "solutions in the back of the book" would have been greatly appreciated.)

The price of this book strikes me as a bit high for a 224-page paperback, but I suppose it's about the going rate these days for texts.

This book is now over 15 years old, and a "refresh" -- with a bit more emphasis on computer-aided design -- would be a nice improvement, even though it's still excellent without these modern considerations. (I'd like to see the author do this "facelift" though -- Bowick's "RF Circuit Design" had such an update a couple years ago, and while it does add value to that book, the added material was written by different authors and it really shows.) Another nice addition would be a list of "popular" transistors and ICs for specific tasks, like H&H provide: They concentrate on what's readily available in the U.S., and while this book gives passing mention to a few such popular devices in the UK, more comprehensive tables would be great.

I purchased this book to help me understand transistors better. It's a much smaller book than the popular Sedra&Smith book. So it's easy to carry on the subway and read. The circuits in the book have detailed explanations attached to them, there are questions at the end of each chapter, and the answers to chapter problems are in the back of the book. So, it's like a small paperback text book. The later chapters get into using OP amps along with transistors to create various types of power supplies. There is a very small amount of time spent on the physics of transistors devices. I've found this book to be pretty helpful.

This is a fairly good practical reference for using a number of solid state devices. It tends to provide readily applicable approximate equations rather than ones that are more complex and scientifically accurate. I've been using it to help me develop my open source electronics simulation software.