ISBN: 0078028167

Copyright year: 2015

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY

Professor Franco has completed his Fourth Edition of “Design with Operational Amplifiers and Integrated Circuits”, a book targeted at Senior undergraduate and Graduate level university engineering courses as well as all levels of design engineers working in the field of electronics. One glance at the Contents pages shows Op Amp fundamentals and active filter applications, followed by practical limitations in the real world and finally on to practical applications. A natural progression towards learning the tools of the Analog design trade.

This fourth edition has updated the textbook in some key areas:

A broadening of the negative feedback area to include added areas widely used in today’s design architectures like switching regulators and phase-locked loops. A really nice treatment and clarification of two-port vs. return-ratio analyses. Op amp dynamics and frequency compensation have been revised according to Middlebrook’s techniques of voltage/current injection. SPICE has advanced since the last edition, so Professor Franco added schematic capture, with the caveat that students be able to select the SPICE version with which they prefer. Refreshed end-of-chapter problems.

I especially like the excellent, practical and very thought-provoking examples at the end of each chapter. All textbooks have this; however, Professor Franco’s aim of honing the skills of the student with the goal of training their minds in the analyses and techniques they will need when they enter the post-university world of electronics is something that many textbooks fail to achieve.

Many pundits in the media today dismiss the need for analog engineers in a so-called digital electronics world. Good Analog designers are no more disappearing than is the analog world around us. The world is Analog (Light/images, sound, fragrance, heat/cold/pressure/pain, flavor) and we sense the world with our analog receivers (Eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue). That will never change. The Analog to Digital converter and the Digital to Analog converter will always be the portals from the real Analog world transformed to the Digital realm where the analog is “assisted”/improved and manipulated and ultimately converted back to Analog or the results just displayed on a monitor for our final analysis.

We need engineers who are proficient in analog design. I encounter students and novice young EEs in the field who want to be analog circuit designers, but do not know where or how to get the experience and mentoring needed to start towards a career path in this unique design arena of Analog design. Well, mentors are few and far between in today’s world, but such textbooks as this one and Professor Franco’s new “Analog Circuit Design, Discrete & Integrated” (Which I will soon also review in my EDN Design Center), are the first step that allow a good professor at the university level, to be their first mentor.

Professor Franco’s text books have the seldom-encountered and unique ability to train the student in the art of the design thought process and as well as the critical need to develop a solid problem-solving methodology in the very challenging discipline of Analog design. Many engineering universities and technical schools omit this critical expertise needed in electronics design and problem-solving.

This is a book that Analog engineers, both novice and seasoned veteran, need to have on their bookshelf as solid references with such features as in-depth mathematical treatments of the devices and the system architectures in which these devices function. The engineer will be able to understand and predict the performance of his or her designs far more reliably through the mathematical treatments exemplified in this book. SPICE models are great tools, but the designer needs to have an intuitive feel for how the circuit will perform before running SPICE in order to quickly assess the simulation result as close to what their “gut” tells them it should be or maybe so far off the mark from what they know that result should be.

In Chapter 1 on Operational Amplifier Fundamentals, I was very pleased to see that the first sentence mentions John R. Raggazini, who in 1947 coined the term operational amplifier. I came to know John Raggazini as Dean of the New York University School of Engineering and Science in Bronx, NY which I attended from 1968 to 1972 and received my undergraduate EE degree. Dean Raggazini was a brilliant engineer as well as mentor to many of us at the University Heights campus. Professor Franco’s treatment of a little bit of the history of Analog is well placed. In order to know who you are as an engineer, you need to know the rich history of Analog the pioneers who brought us to this exciting time in electronics. It’s a great time to be an Analog engineer.

Chapter 1 is the start of a solid foundation for a fledgling Analog engineer. It starts with the classic two-port analysis of the Op Amp and soon progresses to a paragraph on SPICE simulation. Professor Franco is quick to provide the perspective that SPICE is a tool to verify the calculations in our design process and to investigate higher-order effects too complex for paper and pencil analysis. My first engineering manager in the early 70s always told me to never attempt a breadboard without making the design first work on paper. That advice still holds, as the Analog designer needs to have that first pass at a design in a “paper” analysis with a mathematical treatment revealing what is to be logically expected of the circuit performance in the end result.

Professor Franco’s credentials speak for themselves: He was a professor of electronics at San Francisco State University since 1980, only retiring a few years ago. Before 1980, he had extensive industrial experience and has published in such diverse areas as solid state physics, pattern recognition, electronic music, IC design, and medical and consumer electronics.

Some of my best professors at the university level had extensive industry experience in the electronics field. I have also met some of Professor Franco’s former students and they are all, well-rounded, bright young engineers, enjoying their successful and exciting careers in electronics—a testament to his educational prowess and unique method of conveying knowledge to apply practically in the real world. Professor Franco certainly knows how to uncover the “secrets” and the tools needed in the pursuit of a successful career in Analog design.

This text book brings the student through an organized, well thought out progression towards an in-depth understanding of Analog—a very difficult area of electronics. To paraphrase Bob Pease, we as analog engineers, are involved in challenges where computers and simulation cannot help us—experimenting and thinking is our solution to these challenges. Professor Franco’s text book gives us the essential tools to do this experimenting and thinking in order to solve difficult problems that sometimes seem insurmountable. The tools to provide solutions to Analog challenges are right in this book. Learn them and be successful.

To purchase a copy of this essential book, visit the McGraw-Hill Shop.

I look forward to reviewing other books by Professor Franco. See some of his work, analysis and essential though process technique on his EDN blog Analog Bytes, one of the best in-depth technical and tutorial sources on EDN.