Passive and Active Network Analysis and Synthesis

I was fortunate many years ago to study with Aram and use this book in the class. The background I developed to this day is some of the best training I have ever received. The thought processes he uses develop in you an intuition for the subject matter that many authors simply cannot convey. If you are interested in the ins and outs of filters, transfer functions, and other facets of circuit theory, you owe it to yourself to check out Aram's books.

This book provides very good foundations over almost all of the whole area of filter design. It should be stressed that this book is not a filter cookbook for a casual design - it is a very serious guide to the mathematics underlying filter design, starting with a discussion of the Laplace transform, and moving to passive filter design and analysis.Budak enables the reader to acquire a very aquaintance of the limitations involved with network synthesis techniques - exhaustive discussion of issues such as sensitivity (tolerance to component inaccuracy) appear, with a section devoted to component non-ideality.It should be noted that the book was originally published in the early seventies; perhaps the only thing missing from the text is a more contemporary discussion of design techniques applying to active high frequency circuits. Twenty five years ago, video op-amps were not particularly thick on the ground, and this situation has changed a good deal for the better.Another thing which would be very welcome would be a discussion in equal depth regarding the analysis and synthesis of circuits which consist of a mixture of distributed and lumped components.All in all, a very complete and satisfying treatment of a broad subject.