1172 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 69, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 1981
One nice feature of the book is the inclusion of a capsule summary
of certain areas where a review of prerequisite material could be useful.
Included are brief discussions of predicate calculus, graph theory, and
list notation under LISP, among others. These short sections alone
would not be sufficient for a student to grasp the new material without
having covered the prerequisite material in more detail previously.
To quote the author, this book is about some of the more impor-
tant, core AI ideas. It could serve well as a reference text in AI theory
or in a theoretically oriented course in artificial intelligence.
REFERENCES
[ 11 P. H. Winston, Artificial Intelligence. Reading, MA: Addison-
[ Z] N. 1. Nilsson, Problem Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence.
Wesley, 1977.
[ 3] R. E. Fikes and N. J. Nilsson, STRIPS: A new approach to the
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971.
Intell., vol. 2, pp. 189-208, 197 1.
application of theorem proving to problem solving, Artificial
[ 4] M. Minsky, A framework for representing knowledge, in The
Psychology of Computer Vision, P. H. Winston, Ed. New York:
[ 51 R. C. Schank and R. P. Abelson, Scripts, PIans, Go&, and Under-
McGraw-Hill, 1975.
standing. Hillsdale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., 1977.
Reprinted from ZEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine
Intelligence, J anuary 1981.
Electronic Circuits Discrete and Integrated, Second Edition- Donald L.
Schilling and Charles Belove (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979,811 pp.).
Reviewed by David Baez Lopea, Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica,
Optica Y Electronica (INAOE), Ateblo, Mexico.
This book is an updated version of the 1968 edition. The book is
written primarily as a text for an introductory course in electronics,
but it can also be used appropriately for self-study by readers whose
backpound may beweak in any of the topic areas covered, particularly
chapter 3 on field-effect transistors, which also covers CCDs. The
book is heavily design-oriented. Concepts are introduced and circuits
are analyzed to present the fundamentals necessary to enable the reader
to start designing circuits immediately. These facts are complemented
with numerous design examples.
Although the authors assume that the reader has a background in
linear passive-circuit theory, they do not rely on mathematical rigor.
The emphasis of the book is on circuits. The physics used to describe
the operation of diodes and transistors is treated lightly. The presen-
tation of small-signal models for the bipolar and field-effect transistors
does not pretend to correlate precisely the elements of the model to
the physical elements of the device.
Design of a circuit to ensure a stable operating point is very important
and the treatment here is complete and practical. Analysis of the ac
mall signal circuit is done by straightforward application of Kirchhoffs
laws to the low and high-frequency transistor models. This treatment
makes clear the role of poles and zeros in determining the frequency
response. New material on logic analysis techniques has been included.
TTL, ECL, and CMOS logic families are covered, along with methods
of interfacing between them.
Unfortunately, the book lacks the use of computer-aided design
programs which would strongly complement the material in the book.
Reprinted from IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, December 1980.
An Introduction to Digital and Analog Integrated Circuits and Appli-
cations-Sanjit K. Mitra (New York: Harper & Row, 1980, 486 pp.).
Reviewed by Robert C. Meyer, Department of Elecmcal Engineering
and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
This book is intended for a f mt course in electronics for students at
the junior level following a sophomore level course on linear circuit
analysis. The author has been admirably successful in his stated goal
of producing a book which discusses modem integrated circuit (IC)
technology at the module level. A wide variety of circuit functions
in IC form are described and their interaction with each other and the
outside worid is explained using only the stated prerequisite of linear
circuit analysis. To achieve thi s, the author uses some unique and
innovative approaches to modeling and has succeeded in generalizing
the description of many circuit functions in a very lucid fashion.
In Chapter 1 an introduction to both analog and digital signals is
given together with a first look at the role of gates and amplifiers.
The treatment of analog and digital concepts together here should
be quite useful to students.
Chapter 2 contains an excellent treatment of Boolean algebra, num-
ber systems and digital coding methods. This is followed in Chapter 3
by an extensive treatment of combinatorial logic circuits containing
some illuminating examples. Practical concepts such as logic levels
and noise margins are described together with a comparison of IC
logic families and their characteristics. Often ignored (but important)
topics such as wired logic and tristate logic are described. This ex-
cellent chapter finishes with a treatment of the role of ROMs and
PLAs in modem digital design.
In Chapter 4 sequential logic circuits are described. Problems of
timing are treated in some detail together with a very informative
description of the masterslave approach in flip-flop design. Also
included in this chapter are extensive treatments of the analysis and
synthesis of sequential circuits and the design of registers. and counters.
Chapters 5 and 6 describe the characteristics and applications of
amplifiers in analog circuits. The subject is introduced with a general
clasdication of amplifier functions which should help students gain a
perspective of this extensive field. The operational ampuer is treated
in detail together with a description of practical limitations. In the
section on op amp applications, the authors expertise in the field of
active filters is readily apparent.
Finally Chapters 7 and 8 contain a description of nonlinear analog
circuits including analog multipliers, log amplifiers, A/D, and D/A con-
wrters. The treatment of previous chapters in the modeling and char-
acterization of IC functional blocks is used to advantage here.
In summary, this book should find wide application as a junior level
text and also as a reference book for people in peripheral fields who
need to learn the basic principles involved in modem circuit design.
Reprinted from IEEE Circuits and SystemsMagazine, December 1980.
An Introduction to Digital and Analog Integnted Circuits and Appli-
cations-Sanjit K. Mitra (New York: Harper & Row, 1980, 486 pp.).
$24.95). Reviewed by R. S. Larsen, Electronicslnstmmentation Group,
Stanford Linear Accelerator, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA.
The primary goal of this text is to provide a basic background for de-
signing with integrated circuits, using the approach of describing inte-
grated circuits with external parameters rather than explaining internal
circuit details. This is certainly a valid approach, and, in fact, for the
engineering community outside of the integrated circuit design houses,
this is now the established approach. I think the title of the book could
be misleading, e.g., An Introduction to Design Using Digital and Ana-
log Integrated Circuits is more precisely what the book is about.
In general, I found the book to be a quite thorough and well written
text. The level of material presented certainly strikes a nice balance
between being either too simple or too complex. Many of the text
examples are very illuminating. Speakmg from the standpoint of a
practicing engineering manager, I feel the book would serve as a useful
reference for an average engineer, mainly because of the scope of ma-
terial covered, although in some cases the depth is necessarily limited
and would be of limited usefulness to a designer. However, the book
is, after all, an introduction. The main practical use of the text, I feel,
would beas a guide for an in-plant course for engineering technicians/
junior designers. In this regard, it should be excellent.
I have a few minor quibbles. First, although the book deliberately
avoids circuit details, I feel that it would have been worth explaining
the circuit of the basic TTL gate-at least, the input and output sections.
Since this involves switching elements, I feel that the circuit model
(Fig. 1-4) does not adequately explain the true circuit behavior.
Another minor quibble has to do with semantics. A hybrid circuit
(p. 4) is described as one containing both analog and digital compo-
nents. There is an unfortunate confusion with the term as commonly
used to describe the hybrid construction technique for ICs, i.e., hybrid
as opposed to monolithic. A hybrid IC, in this sense, may bea strictly
digital circuit, albeit a special one. Similarly, NOTs are most com-
monly called INVERTERS and this connection is eventually made later
in the text. A video amplifier is described as one with a bandwidth out
to about 4 MHz; later, an example is given of a practical amplifer with
a bandwidth of 100 MHz. In general, I think the term video has
come to be synonomous with wide-band in common usage.