31 �IEEE CIRCUITS & DEVICES MAGAZINE � NOVEMBER 2003

REVIEWSBook

8755-3996/03/$17.00 ©2003 IEEE

IS-95 CDMA AND CDMA 2000:CELLULAR/PCS SYSTEMS

IMPLEMENTATIONEdited by Vijay K. Garg, Prentice Hall,2000.

The famed Bell Laboratoriesresearcher, Claude Shannon, showedthat the communications channel capac-ity can be maximized by transmission ofinformation carried by a set of noise-likewaveforms. In CDMA, all subscribers usethe same carrier. Moreover, each signalis coded to appear as noise (interference)with respect to every other signal.

If every client’s address codes are com-pletely orthogonal with each other (in thewhole communicating process of sendingor receiving), we can realize the highcapability communication in the highspectrum factor on the same carrier.FDMA and TDMA can’t do this. But whenit comes to application, it is very difficult,unless the number of actual clients ismuch less than the designing capability(this is the current situation of running aCDMA system). To really achieve Shan-non theory, we must guarantee that everyclient’s address codes intersect perpendic-ularly in the communication system andcommunication network. This book dis-cussed a lot about all these. I think: in thenetwork designing, we can combine dis-tributing communication method andadaptive antenna. It could obtain goodcommunication effects.

In the CDMA layered structures, it isbetter to introduce about the more prac-tices of net architectures traffics analysiswith queuing theory and the microcellular

and nonuniformed cellular structures. Itseems that at the condition of transmis-sion under the random channel trafficscan obtaining more benefits by consider-ing the subscriber access problem withthe network layout subscriber number.

This is a good textbook about CDMA.It deeply analyzes the advanced CDMAdigital mobile communication systemfrom 2G to 3G.

This book can be used by practicingtelecommunications engineers involvedin the design and operation of CDMA-based cellular/PCS networks as well asby senior or graduate students intelecommunications engineering andnetwork engineering curricula.

POWER ELECTRONICSHANDBOOK

By M.H. Rashid, Academic Press, 2001.This book covers a major aspect of

power electronic industry and is proba-bly the most comprehensive descriptionof the design for the industry. It coverstopics from device engineering to cir-cuits and system. The book is composedof many chapters written by fieldexperts.

The book is tailored toward a refer-ence book for the working professionalrather than a textbook for a universitycourse. It is easy to understand andskipped quite many theoretical mathinvolved. Many examples are explainedwith simulations. Also, the descriptionsabout devices are accompanied withindustrial specifications.

Regarding comprehensiveness, thebook covers topics from converters tolow power system to power supply forhigh power systems like motors. Awide range of devices used in powercontrol/system are mentioned: powerdiode, IGBT, power MOS, and BJT. Thedevice optimization for high power isexplained as well.

I have not come across a book thatexplains power electronics so compre-hensively. I recommend the book forreference.

FAST ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUESFOR ELECTRICAL ANDELECTRONIC CIRCUITS

By V. Vorperian, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002.

Electrical and electronic circuit the-ories are the most elementary subjectsin electrical engineering. It is nice thatthis book intends to introduce new tech-niques in this well-established field.

This book is primarily based on theextra element theorem (EET) for elec-tric circuits developed by Prof. R.D.Middlebrook at the California Instituteof Technology, with applications start-ing from simple bridge-type circuits tofeedback amplifier circuits and pulse-width-modulated switching dc-to-dcpower converters.

Unfortunately the book does not pre-sent the physical concept and offers noproof of the EET theorem before apply-ing it. The author seems to assume thatreaders are already familiar with EETand tries simply to demonstrate hismethod of solving circuit problems withmany examples by quoting formulaswithout derivations. For example, thesimple example of a bridge circuit in sec-tion 1.2 could be solved easily with adelta-star transformation explained in allelementary circuit books, to verify hisequations (1.4) and (1.5). But he chooseto quote the EET formula without prov-ing it, although the proof is explainedlater in chapters 3 and 4, by still refer-ring to the work of Middlebrook and thenetwork book by Bode. It seems he couldhave easily demonstrated the derivationof EET in terms of the matrix manipula-tions described in chapters 3 and 4before applying it in section 1.2.

If you are interested in reviewing abook for IEEE Circuits & DevicesMagazine, please visit our Web siteat http://users.erols.com/circuits fora complete list of available titles.

� 32 IEEE CIRCUITS & DEVICES MAGAZINE � NOVEMBER 2003

The title of Fast Analytical Tech-niques actually may not be the bestchoice for the book, as the author indi-cated in the preface himself. We mayalso wonder whether quoting formulasfor final answers can be qualified asbeing “fast” or indeed whether a fastanalysis is better. If a new technique canbe used to solve problems not solvablewith conventional techniques, then thetechnique is definitely valuable. Howfast one can solve a problem is often notimportant.

The book demonstrated the applica-tion of EET to amplifier circuits withnegative feedback. It would be nice tocompare his new technique with con-ventional approaches. See, for example,H. Hsu: “On transformation of linearactive networks with applications atultra high frequencies,” Proc. IRE., pp.59-67, Jan. 1953; Y. Xu: “Feedback inelectronics and optoelectronics,” M.S.thesis, The Ohio State University, 1985;Tong, Shibai: “The exact evaluation ofA and F of a feedback amplifier by vir-tual connection concept,” Journal ofEEEE (Journal of Electrical, and Elec-tronic Engineering Education), vol. 2,no. 2, pp. 27-31, May 2000 (in Chinese);and Tong, Shibai: Fundamentals ofAnalog Electronics, 3rd edition, 2001,Higher Education Press, Beijing, China(in Chinese).

The book has eight chapters. After abrief introduction on the book in chap-ter 1 and a brief review of transfer func-tion in chapter 2, the EET and itsextension of the N-Extra Element Theo-rem (NEET) are described in chapters 3and 4. The subject of electronic feedbackis treated in chapter 5. The examplespresented in chapters 6 and 7 demon-strated the application of the EET tech-nique to more complicated circuits.Chapter 8 shows the application topulse-width modulated switching dc-to-dc power converters.

This book is not written for any ele-mentary circuit course. But peopleinterested in circuit and network analy-sis may be interested in this book forfurther reference. I think it might benice to add an appendix for this book toinclude some reprints of the originalpapers by Prof. Middlebrook and

coworkers especially those presented thebasic concepts.

FUNCTIONAL DECOMPOSITIONWITH APPLICATIONS TO FPGA SYNTHESIS

By Christoph Scholl, Kluwer Academic,2001.

I came across this book while work-ing on a reconfigurable FPGA-basedproject. The publisher states that thebook is geared towards researchers,advanced students, and professionalsworking in FPGA design or synthesisalgorithm development. My goal inreading the book was to learn enoughabout functional decomposition to writesome code to solve an FPGA logic syn-thesis problem. It turned out that it waseasier to redefine the problem so thatfunctional decomposition was no longernecessary.

The majority of the logic synthesisresearch on Boolean equations dealswith logic minimization. A standard goalis to minimize the number of productterms required to implement a function.With functional decomposition, the goalis to minimize a logic implementationwhile using only a particular set of func-tions. This is especially applicable toFPGA synthesis, because the target logicfunction can be an FPGA lookup table.

The book begins with an excellentintroduction to the field of functionaldecomposition and its role in designautomation. The first chapter providesbackground information that is neces-sary to understand the following chap-ters, such as Boolean equation notationand a binary decision diagram overview.Chapter two deals entirely with the min-imization of binary decision diagrams.Chapter 3 continues with a discussion ofdecomposition of single output func-tions. Chapter 4 covers decompositionof multi-output functions. The remain-ing chapters discuss more advanced top-ics. Overall, the book is logicallystructured and well organized. Theindex seemed a little sparse for a book ofits size.

The background required to under-stand the book is described as “a basicknowledge of mathematics and of somefields of computer science such as com-

plexity theory and graph theory.” Whilethis is true, if your mathematical nota-tion skills are a little rusty, it will beslow reading. I guess it all depends onyour definition of “basic knowledge.”

The book contains a large number oftheorems and their associated proofs. Itbuilds on these proofs to provide algo-rithms to implement the various aspectsof functional decomposition. However,actually implementing the algorithms isnot just a matter of reading the section ofthe book containing the algorithm. Thereader must absorb and understand thebackground material and have a goodunderstanding of the subject before any-thing useful can be implemented. This isnot a book that is going to provide aquick canned solution to a problem.

Overall, the book achieves its goal ofproviding a “comprehensive presenta-tion of a multitude of results stemmingfrom the author’s as well as variousresearchers’ work in the field.” However,it is not a book to be taken lightly. It willrequire some effort on the part of thereader to learn enough to start applyingthe information.

SURVEY OF INSTRUMENTATIONAND MEASUREMENT

Edited by Stephen A. Dyer, Wiley Inter-science, June 2001.

This big book contains 97 articlesselected from the Wiley Encyclopedia ofElectrical and Electronics Engineering,giving a broad coverage of topics oninstrumentation and measurements.

The Encyclopedia was publishedaround 1999. But the book has practical-ly no coverage of digital electronics. Itmay be an indication that the Encyclope-dia was prepared too long ago and thusnot quite up to date. It would be nice toinclude some more material on digitaldata acquisition and signal processingtechniques together with some reportson working units. Also some more opti-cal devices to replace the rather old elec-trical devices would be helpful to makethe book more up to date.

The first chapter on various sensorsand transducers includes descriptionson chemical sensors, fiber-optic sensors,and biosensors. This is followed by achapter on signal conditioning includ-