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Up until that time I had only discerned the subject in hints and veiled inter departmental discussions - and it was the start of a wonderful two months period in which so much was revealed - I have rarely enjoyed a book so much! Now look, I don't work for Mr Amazon.com, but I would urge you to get both. This book (the one by Keith Billings) has lots of detail which the Abrahamson book skips a wee bit. They dovetail together beautifully - and the Abrahamson book includes a bit more breadth on the possible topologies. One of my favorite chapters in THIS book is the excellent exposition on biploar and FET drive circuits. Its made very clear - this man is a BORN teacher...

This book even tells you how to select fuses, filter capacitors (the point being that the values you chose last month might well be right, but after this text you will know with far greater confidence, as it were)

I must say that the one thing that both books are a little light on is the subject of CUK convertors, which I will have to get wisdom on from elsewhere I guess. The other thing that NEITHER books mention, which in fact is hard to find, is the design of planar transformers. This is a complex area involving quite a lot of maths, so I've been told. You can find some material in IEEE transactions on power electronics, and similar journals, but you may have to hunt a bit. Philips / Ferroxcube are good for this, too.

The Abrahamson book covers current fed convertors. This includes a section on flyback current fed convertors - in which I think he forgot to elaborate on the case where the input transformer returns to the input, rather than the output, which appears to reduce input ripple and improves the power factor. But this case is handled quite well in the references given at the end of the chapter, so no matter. Its a very exciting chapter - but the Billings book doesn't cover them at all, which is a pity, since there's quite a lot of utility for these very stable topologies, involving quite light voltage and current strain on the switching transistors.

I wish the books could go on even further, but all I can be is grateful...

I must say also that the safety aspect of design is covered well in both books, both European and American.


Excelent refernce source   September 13, 1999
This book does an excelent job of providing facts and information needed to design switchmode supplies. It gives numerical examples and shows the underlying theories.


Theory is well explained. Very practical.   January 12, 1999
This book is a must for any switch mode power supply designer. The book covers all the popular power converter topologies being used today. There are chapters on peripheral circuits to the main power stage which are rarely seen in other power supply books.The book includes many practical examples that makes the theory easier to understand.