RF Microelectronics (Prentice Hall Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies)

Well, as I stated in other Dr. Razavi's book reviews, it's my pleasure to own and read every book written by Dr. Razavi. I have been waiting for this new edition for some time, and immediately purchased this 2nd edition from amazon.com once it's published. As an RF/analog engineer, I personally have benefited from all of his masterpieces. Many thanks for the author's great efforts, Dr. Razavi's books have influenced many engineers and students in the RF/analog area. So, how is this 2nd edition? In my opinion, it might be inappropriate to call it "2nd edition" as this is a completely new book with vast improvements from the 1st edition. We have experienced a rapid growth of RF design within last decade, and this book covers most of the fundamentals of RF circuit/system design techniques to deal with today's challenges. It's understandable that some of the readers are not happy with the 1st edition in their reviews, but this new book is totally different (Dr. Razavi says there's only 10% overlap between two editions in his preface to the 2nd edition, it's absolutely true). Here is what I like most: 1. Dedicated chapters for LNA and mixers; 2. Great coverage on passive devices; 3. Three chapters to cover frequency synthesizers, which cover fundamentals, integer-N and fractional-N synthesizers; 4. Step-by-step tutorial of modern RF transceiver design; 5. In addition to all the new materials on RF systems and circuits, one of the biggest improvements is that the author incorporated hundreds examples/problems in the book. Some help readers understand RF fundamentals, and some are very practical issues facing RF engineers. There are several errors in the book, make an online search you'll be able to find the errata to the 2nd edition. And of course, the coverage of RF design by a single book is limited though it has over 900 pages. Here are some of my recommendations if you are interested in other RF/analog materials, and they are not related to this review: Analog circuit design: Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits CMOS Analog Circuit Design (The Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering) CMOS Circuit Design, Layout, and Simulation, 3rd Edition (IEEE Press Series on Microelectronic Systems) Analog Integrated Circuit Design RF Systems and Circuits: Radio Receiver Design RF and Microwave Transmitter Design (Wiley Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering) The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits, Second Edition RF System Design of Transceivers for Wireless Communications Practical RF System Design

This is an excellent textbook. It is very well written, thorough, has numerous real world examples, and a plentiful number of diagrams. I received my Electrical Engineering degree in 1984 at the University of Texas at Austin. I am retired now and wanted to refresh what I learned in college and also learn more current technological advances. I put together a small lab (see photo) and have purchased several text books. This book is exceptional! The author uses diagrams to illustrate different technologies. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn or refresh what they have already learned.

Excellent

Of course I haven't finished the book. But this does not stop me to rate it 5 stars. The book is well structured, written in a very clearly and informative way. You will get exactly what you see on table of content and much more! For example, I want to learn about VCO, there are tons of books out there and nearly none of them explain why the VCO has structure like that (you can search for the circuit easily); and none of them has real number with real calculation for reference. This book explains why, and how to calculate the component. And in other chapters, it introduces each component in details.

The book covers much more topics than the 1st edition, represented in the contents of key building blocks of wireless transceiver. But Power Amplifier seems the drawbacks of the book which does not provide readers with a systematic way to design especially compared with the contents in T.H.Lee's book. The Transceiver Architecture, LNA, Oscillator, PLL chapter are depicted very well. But the chapter for Mixer is a little bit disorganized which too much emphasis on noise analysis, but the linearity seems ignored. Passive Components, though are introduced in detail, I suppose that B.Razavi may read T.H.Lee'S book very carefully, and write this chapter, to be frank, he did not show us how to accurately design passive components like spiral inductor, bondwire, stack inductor etc. However, anyway, this book is still highly recommended which covers many new topics. I am wondering if Asad Abidi could write a book on RF CMOS circuits, that should be the sheer classical tome in this area since his status in this area cannot be surpassed currently. His research papers are really insightful, intuitive and accurate. Hopefully, before he retires, A. Abidi could complete such a book.

I have been so far using the first edition as the top referance in my lectures. The second is much more detailed and covers the most recent advances in RF Microelectronics field. Thanks to B. Razavi for this very valuable and constructive recent work. I will continue using it as our major referance book and will recomend my colleques to get one issue in order to satisfy their RF dreams. Prof. Dr. Osman PAL-Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Electronics and Communication

The second edition of this book is an excellent completely new book. Nobody in the RF field has written a book that is even close to the level of quality of this book. The book has lots of excellent plus relevant up to date examples and exercises. Without a doubt, this book is going to be a classic for years to come. Thomas Lee's book may come in far distance second place mainly because it is very vague and it hand waves lots of very important topics. Even though Lee is a very entertaining author, his books lack the mathematical rigor and explanations, leaving many important derivations as exercises to the reader.

This book succeeds on providing an accurate description of some of the RF topics. It is well explained, however, sometimes you would need to refresh some basics if you have not had prior experience with RF topics. I would recommend it for graduate studies or for students who would like to get deeper in the field.

Honestly one of the best RF textbooks I've read. Overall it's rare to come across a textbook that gives you a system understanding of circuits, a way of developing intuition, and detailed design methodologies. Razavi is able to do all of these.

Tolles Buch, kostet aber auch ganz viel.

delivered in nice condition. If getting more discount in other site, then go for that otherwise its fine

Vale la pena investire un pò di euro in più per avere la versione rilegata con copertina rigida. Non conosco la versione originale del 1997, ma questa seconda edizione contiene tutto quello che occorre sapere sulla microelettronica in radiofrequenza