Analog Circuits (World Class Designs)

This book is a great collection by Bob Pease, most chapters (or articles) are good, some are stellar and only a few are subpar. Some chapters are very very simple, for instance chapter 4 "Finding the perfect opamp" could be described as "chapter 0 of any standard opamp text book", im not saying the information there is not useful, its just a first day at school in 101 opamp theory.What makes this book different from say a standard opamp text book are the tips and tricks, rules of thumb and case studies offered by the authors. The case study of chapter 9 and the Zoo circuit at the end are both particularly great, chapter 9 in my opinion is probably the best one, it is the closest to having an analog engineer sitting next to you and explaining his methodology and his circuits, in this chapter the author gives a lot of great tips, and a minimum math rule of thumb and intuitive approach to circuit design, he concludes his chapter by analyzing a complete circuit, not just an idealized part, he will through the entire circuit which is not small at all, opamp through opamp, component through component, and explain why everything is there, and why did he choose such values, he will then calculate such values using his rules of thumb and therefore avoiding heavy math derivations. Also in that chapter it is described a very useful practical approach to stabilize some feedback loops without going deep into feedback theory.A similar chapter is chapter 3 in which the author explains his methodollogy to designing circuits by laying out simple function blocks and progressively adding limitations, but not the entire circuit is analyzed.Chapter 5 on noise is great, with examples of noise calculations and an applied example using instrumentation amplifiers a load cell and ADCs.A considerable chunk of the book is devoted to Analog filters (4 chapters in total, low pass, hi pass, bandpass, band-reject), the filter theory is a bit messy in my opinion, and the author references a lot of graphs, facts and tables which are not provided in the book, instead of providing such material, the author refers to another book in which such graphs, tables and facts can be located. That to me is very messy, having to buy, rent, download, or borrow another book to see what the author is talking about is not really my cup of tea, he will say stuff like "By looking at the graph in the reference book mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, it is apparent that the filter must be a 5th order...".Also considering that the vast amount of filters covered in this book are available in many standard opamp books such as the one by Sergio Franco or Valkenburg's book, it makes all of these chapters in my opinion feel like a bit of a filler in this book, which in my humble point of view should focus more on unconventional circuits or stuff not available everywhere else. Still, the author offers normalized tables and circuits to easily calculate your filters, and that is quite useful. Also I liked that the author covers a small portion of passive LCR filters, only 3rd and 5th Butterworth passive filters are covered, but again, provides normalized circuits to quickly scale them to fit your needs, quite useful indeed.The book also has a chapter covering a bit of layout, pcb, components, etc.. similar to "The Circuit Companion's handbook" however what makes it different from such book, or many of the books out there is that it offers a very interesting case study about the layout for a high power laser driver.Another large part of the book is dedicated to ADC, DAC and general analog-digital interfacing, with a particularly great chapter on ADCs with case studies explaining different sensors and applications.In general I would say this is a great book, with real gems in there, you wont become an expert analog designer thats for sure and you will not find the secret and holly grail of analog design, not all of the circuits in the book are "World class designs" as the title suggest, but you'll surely learn a lot of new tricks and circuits, plus youll get into the mindset of some of the best analog designeers, and hopefully try to apply it on your own designs..If your are an analog designer or hoping on becoming one, this book is for you. Dont be fooled by the fact that the editor (Bob Pease) mentions that the math in there is at the highschool level, yes you wont find big differential equations or Fourier series and such, but you definitely need a solid background in electric circuit theory, control theory, opamps, transistors and some electromagnetic theory to fully understand the content of this book, stuff like poles, zeros, transfer functions, Bode plots, compensation techniques, opamp equations, etc.. are mentioned all the time, it is not a begginers book.

Robert Pease is certainly one of the legends in analog circuit design.His contempt for SPICE simulation is quite well known in the community.But I have to disagree...I had to brush up on my filter design knowledge and I had a surprise:The section on BPF and notch filters contains errors... many. And they arenot simply type setting errors. For instance in one of the filters a value is labeledas 100pF, while it should be 100nF (P140). Then in another example he got theresonance frequency of the filter very wrong (P264). Resistor references are wrong labeled (P264)If he would have used SPICE he would have discovered that there is a sloppymistake somewhere. The prototype would not worked either, but this would take a lot longerto solder up the circuitObviously /rap knows how to calculate filters, but he is so confident that he makescasual mistakes.But this all does not matter, because as soon as you make an effort to understandthe subject matter, the errors become obvious.Someone should have proof-read the book before publishing however.Otherwise it is one of the best books on electronics I ever bought. It is not trivial and the titleis misleading. "World class designs" ... anybody who thinks this is just a collection of circuits youcan rip off... not so. This is a book which teaches the finer aspects of analog circuit design.Not really for beginners however, and there is some math you need to understand.He shares some knowledge in electronics, you will never learn in school.Also he talks about a general approach to any design (if not life in general).Do not dismiss it lightly

World class? Here's a review of some of the chapters: Review of Feedback systems....Basic Operation Amplifier Topologies....review of passive components and a case study in PC board layout, 4 chapters if you can believe it--on filter design, a chapter on noise....all of these represent basics, rudimentary material an EE grad should have mastered...and can hardly be considered world class. Some of the remaining chapters: How to Design Analog circuits without a computer....My approach to feedback design...Jim Williams "zoo circuit", while having their merits....can all be found in the "EDN series fordesign engineers". And to publish Pease's notes on Vbe.....Pulease, Pease.... "What's all this vbe stuff" can be found online for free.In summary, this text will help augment an undergraduate EE's education. It might be useful for non-hardware or digital designer types who have to stray out of their comfort zones, into the analog domain. But there is little in this text that actually world class. Williams Zoo circuit is the the only world class design. Everything else is either rudimentary, or a rip off of other previous published material.I downgraded the text to 3 stars because the text is somewhat deceptive as to what it purports to be. It should be more appropriately titled: "Analog Circuits: Basics To Be Mastered". The authors are competent, and well known in the field, so it wasn't downgraded any further.

I highly recommend this book if you work with analog electronics. The Newnes World Class Series has not disappointed me so far - this book and the  Power Sources and Supplies: World Class Designs  book are my two favourites. It ought to be required reading on undergraduate EE courses.If you're a Bob Pease fan, do bear in mind he edited the book and much of the content comes from other writers, but the content is all of the top quality you'd expect from Bob. Power Sources and Supplies: World Class Designs

If you searched hard enough you could probably find most of if not all the information in this book online. I was hoping for content similar to that found in one of Ian Hickman's books, but felt somewhat dissapointed by the rather boring and basic information in most of the chapters.

Classic. Record of the thinking of a great designer. Essential reading for anyone practicing or teaching analogue design in electronics.

I little disappointed versus the LTC books, but OK.

Ein Muß für jeden, der sich mit dem Entwurf, der Dimensionierung, den Spezifikationen, aber dann vor allem der ausgefeilten Optimierung elektronischer Schaltungen befaßt, wobei die analoge Signalverarbeitung bei dem leider nicht mehr unter uns weilenden Autor, dem Alt- und Großmeister der ordentlichen Elektronenbewegung, im Vordergrund steht.Ein Genuß zu lesen. Viele Entwickler haben das Fachwissen und -können, wie Bob Pease es hatte, aber kaum jemand konnte es bislang so gekonnt in Worte fassen. Nur Englisch muß man können, aber das kann in der Branche ja eh vorausgesetzt werden.Pflichtbestand für jede Schaltungsentwickler-Bibliothek - aber nicht nur dort, sondern auch als Feierabend-, Fest- und Ferientags- und Nachttischlektüre geeignet - technische Literatur, die fast schon Lyrikcharakter hat.