Depending on your point of view | Linear Circuit Analysis: Time Domain, Phasor, and Laplace Transform...

Gives You a Strong Foundation | Linear Circuit Analysis: Time Domain, Phasor, and Laplace Transform Approaches (The Oxford Series in ... | Raymond A. DeCarlo, Pen-Min Lin

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	• Linear Circuit Analysis: Time Domain, Phasor, and Laplace Transform Approaches (The Oxford Series in ... Raymond A. DeCarlo, Pen-Min Lin Oxford University Press, USA, 2001 - 1024 pages view larger image
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Is this book being bombed?

Its a pity that a few (or the same?) undergrad studends, unhappy (?) with the recommended text for their circuit analysis course (or unhappy with their teacher?), which, by sure, have never seen many more texts on the subject, and possibly don't grasp a lot of the relevant matters, feel confident to (under)rate this book as they do.

The authors of this book have a place in the history of circuit analysis: P.-M. Lin has written, jointly with Leon Chua, "Computer-Aided Analysis of Electronic Circuits: Algorithms and Computational Techniques" which is often coined as the "Kama-Sutra of circuit simulation"; R. DeCarlo has written "Linear Systems: a State Variabe Approach with Numerical Implementation". I own copies of both books and they are worth every cent they costed me.

The above note doesn't end the accomplishments of the authors: for instance, they are highly regarded researchers in the analog fault diagnosis area, and P.-M. Lin has done important work on Symbolic Network Analysis.

Of course, the reputation of the authors doesn't make a good book. But "Linear Circuits...", from DeCarlo and Lin is a very good book. When one of the reviewers of this book says "It took the entire chapter of THIRTY FIVE pages to explain simple relations between voltage, current, and resistance" it omits that, in the same chapter, are introduced the effective or RMS value of a periodic signal, the four linear dependent (controlled) sources, the notion of lumped element, of memoryless element, etc... It suffices to say that in page 35 there is a list of terms and concepts discussed in chapter 1 with about 40 entries.

The authors also touch the 'nonlinear world' where they can: saturation in OPAMPS (Ch. 4), comparators with OPAMPS, nonlinear battery charge model (ch. 2), diode rectifiers (ch. 22).

They present Modified Nodal Analysis, the 'universal' circuit analysis method used by almost all circuit simulators, although in a starred section (which I wouldn't have done). This is not common in textbooks.

There are many practical examples: the DAC with R-2R ladder in ch. 4, the diode rectifier in ch. 22 and chapter 21 on basic filtering, for instance.

And I, an old monkey, even have learned something: for instance, I have never used the modified superposition analysis presented in ch. 5.

The bridge between circuit models and the underlying physics (electromagnetics) is done in several places (e.g. when inductors are discussed), what promotes the intelectual development of the students by cross-coupling models at two levels of detail.

The matters lacking in this book are mostly related with nonlinear circuit analysis (at least with quiescent point and incremental/small-signal analysis) but current circuit texts suffer from this illness (I miss the now out-of-print text from Chua/Desoer/Kuh, "Linear and Nonlinear Circuits"...). The fact that nonlinear circuits are 'overlooked' creates the awkward idea that "nonlinear circuits=electronics" (its in the basic electronics courses that nonlinearity is suddenly presented), and prevents the students of ever seeing a sistematic (basic) treatment of nonlinear circuits and devices. It also creates the idea that standard electronic circuits are a kind of 'miracles' and their analysis is done with magic tricks.

A well chosen bibliography would be welcome in the text.

Enough said. Overall, this is my preferred circuit analysis textbook in print. It goes beyond 'circuits as cultural animation', presents a good blend of practical and theoretical issues and well chosen examples. It clearly is not suitable for unmotivated and 'weak' students, as the matters are not presented as recipes or in a 'canned' manner.

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Depending on your point of view

This book is certainly not a list of equations explaining how to and when to use them. It includes a lot of theory and derivation which can seem useless when all you want to do is solve V=IR. But I think one of the objectives of this book is to include the complexity behind the equations simply because there is complicated theory behind linear circuit analysis. That is why at times Decarlo will say, 'I will not go into the derivation, that is for more advanced topics' and of that sort. If you want to learn the subject to the fullest understanding, this book will do a pretty good job. That is why it has been published by Oxford publisher like it has. It didn't make it that far for no reason. I have almost finished summarizing the book on my website which can easily be found by typing in the text name and the author followed by notes in a serach engine. In the end though the most important tool that will help you learn the material is practice of course.

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Gives You a Strong Foundation

I wish I had this book when I was studying EE some years back. It is by far the best and most solid introduction to electric circuits I have ever seen. It goes the extra mile to strengthen the reader's foundation in circuits, even in things which may seem trivial or unnecessary to some people (e.g. meticulous attention to passive versus active sign conventions). The explanations are clear, precise, and unambiguous. The breadth of topics is commendable. It is well balanced, e.g., it is up to date on computational techniques (MATLAB and Spice), yet does not weaken its presentation of traditional circuit principles. The book is attractive, the print is sharp, the two-tone diagrams look professional. The CD contains real stuff, including a Laboratory Manual and additional MATLAB problems.

To some people, the extra care taken to explain things (especially in chapter one) may make the book seem wordy. This probably accounts for the low ratings given by my fellow Amazon reviewers who seem to prefer a more concise approach.

A good supplement to this book is Schaum's Electric Circuits, which covers the same topics but does not go as deep as DeCarlo and Lin. If you go through both books from cover to cover, I am confident you will gain a strong foundation for further studies. This is vital because a weak or incomplete foundation in circuit theory is perhaps the MAIN cause of difficulties that people encounter in their future engineering studies or engineering practice.

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Designed for an introductory electric circuits course, the second edition of Linear Circuit Analysis provides authoritative and in-depth yet highly accessible coverage of traditional linear circuit analysis topics--both concepts and computation.

This second edition represents an exhaustive revision, featuring:
Complete integration and extensive use of MATLABRG in solving problems and examples
Frequent use of SPICE, especially with op amp circuits
Twenty percent more examples and numerous additional illustrations
Approximately three times as many exercises immediately following the examples
More than 1000 end-of-chapter problems (approximately 25% more than the first edition, categorized and graded from the simpler to the more complex; this edition includes many new basic problems)
Excellent pedagogical elements including case studies, motivational real-world illustrations, and key terms and concepts

A CD in each book! The CD contains:
Complete Solutions for Students to 10% of the Homework Exercises. These solutions have been solved step-by-step by the authors and are installed on the disk in an Adobe AcrobatRG file.
Additional MATLABRG Problems. Designed to challenge students and extend their understanding of software tools, these complex MATLAB problems are contained on the CD in an Adobe Acrobat file. Solutions are available at www.decarlolin.org under "MATLAB Solutions."
Laboratory Manual. A 214-page laboratory manual is resident on the in-text CD in Adobe Acrobat. It includes course objectives, course requirements, laboratory safety instructions, fifteen experiments, and nine useful appendices.
A FREE Copy of the MultisimRG 2001 Textbook Edition (SPICE Simulator). This powerful simulation software contains a fully functional version of MultisimRG 2001 and includes a 1500 component database, 6 virtual instruments, 6 analyses, the Simplified Version Interface, and Save and Print capabilities. It creates and saves new circuits and will read and simulate any circuit created in the MultisimRG 2001 Education or Student Editions.

An extensive instructor's package--available free to adopters--includes:
Solutions Manual CD to Accompany Linear Circuit Analysis (0-19-514218-7) with complete detailed solutions to all the end-of-chapter problems. For more information, call your Oxford sales representative at 1-800-280-0280.
Microsoft PowerPointRG Overheads to Accompany Linear Circuit Analysis (0-19-514724-3) includes over 350 figures and captions from the book, enlarged and enhanced for classroom presentation. Contact your Oxford sales representative at 1-800-280-0280 to order this CD-ROM and hundreds of additional PowerPoint overheads from other Oxford texts.
A website, www.decarlolin.org, with additional instructor resources, web links, enhancement materials, and errata.

To extend the introduction to selected topics or provide additional practice we recommend the following additional items:
Allan's Circuits Problems by Allan Kraus (0-19-514248-9) includes over 400 circuit analysis problems with complete solutions.
SPICE, Second Edition by Gordon Roberts and Adel Sedra (0-19-510842-6) features over 100 examples and numerous exercises for computer-aided analysis of microelectronic circuits.
Getting Started with MATLABRG by Rudra Pratap (0-19-512947-4) provides a quick introduction to using this powerful software.
Getting Started with MATLABRG (Version 6) by Rudra Pratap (0-19-515014-7)

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