[time-nuts] PLL book 3rd edition

Brent brent.evers at gmail.com
Wed Mar 9 15:35:56 EST 2016


Ulrich -

I checked my bookshelf last night and sure enough, Rhode's "Digital PLL
Frequency Synthesizers - Theory and Design" is still sitting faithfully
there (I thought it might have been lost with my missing copy of "Microwave
Transistor Amplifiers by Gonzales).  I remember getting it directly from
you probably right around 1996, when I was working on PLL's at Watkins
Johnson as a young (and back then, "still-relevant" engineer).  I remember
there was quite a dearth of information on practical PLL theory and design
(at least that I could find), and that it (your book) was essentially out
of print.  I felt lucky to have found that you still had a pile of them for
sale.

I moved on from that work shortly after and never knew that a new edition
was re-incarnated as "Microwave and Wireless Synthesizers: Theory and
Design".

To me, your PLL book, and others like Gonzales and Clarke and Hess's
"Communication Circuits: Analysis and Design"  and some of the old HP app
notes were the "Art of Electronics" of my RF world.

Brent
KD4VMM


On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 2:44 PM, Magnus Danielson <magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
> wrote:

> Hi Ulrich and Jim,
>
> On 03/08/2016 07:11 PM, jimlux wrote:
>
>> The people who really know about this stuff do it for a living, all the
>> time, and probably don't have a lot of free time. I've done a couple of
>> book chapters, and it's an enormous amount of work, and that's with
>> collaborators and editors to help.  I suspect that  for these people the
>> problem is not a lack of "funding" from the employer, but, rather, that
>> there is more work to do than people to do it.
>>
>> And, often, the "state of the art" is either proprietary or subject to
>> other controls on distribution.  Unless you are in a special situation
>> (e.g. you own the company, or it's a small company and the owner(s)
>> agree), I can see management not seeing the "value added proposition"
>> for letting your talented, knowledgable PLL guru work on getting into a
>> form suitable for publication: they'd rather you be making boxes.
>>
>
> Indeed, this is really a problem. At the same time, people do need to
> learn the basics and honestly, there haven't been many good books but lots
> of half-crap books.
>
> There is also many aspects which you need to learn as concepts, even if
> you use gift-wrapped designs.
>
> At the same time, there is always a generation shift, there is always new
> designers that need to learn how to do this, that need the advice.
> I find that I teaches basics regularly to my colleagues, so that they can
> design a better solutions.
>
> I think there is value in keeping a good reference book maintained and up
> to date.
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
>
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