Digital Power Electronics and Applications
by Fang Lin Luo, Hong Ye, and Muhammad Rashid, Published by Academic Press
ISBN 0-1208-8757-6, hardback, 900 pp, $89.95

ZONE Reviewer: Dennis L. Feucht

Before plunging into this book, I thumbed through it, looking for a Gestalt pattern that is indicative of a good book: the right mix of math, circuit diagrams, waveforms, and other tokens of worthwhile erudition. This book had the right feel. It is written by a cosmopolitan combination of an established Chinese professor in Singapore; his bright-eyed and productive student, who completed her PhD in Singapore and has written seven textbooks and more than 48 technical papers in refereed journals -- but from her photo could not be over 30 years old; and an EE professor at the University of Florida, also well-established in scholarly credentials. (See the related review on Rashid's Power Electronics Handbook, Second Edition.)

This book begins by reviewing in sufficient depth basic power-circuits concepts, including a gallery of common topologies and various basic PWM sequences for H-bridges and half H-bridges. Then some pushing of the converter art emerges on page 31. The century-old engineering design parameters, such as power factor, THD, and ripple factor hardly seem relevant when switching supplies now have near-ideal values of each, the authors propose. They are not deemed adequate in quantifying the energy-transfer process, so "Dr. Fang Lin Luo and Dr. Hong Ye firstly created new theory and parameters to describe the characteristics of all switching circuits in 2004" (p 31). They have introduced a new quantity of converter merit: energy factor. Chapter 2 then covers Energy Factor (EF) and Sub-sequential [Subsequent] Parameters.

An aside on the language in the book: it is in English, but too much of it is Chinglish for the publisher to not have corrected, especially in a chapter title. I am not complaining, being fluent only in English and not in zhong wen (or maybe guo yü in Singapore). I'm thankful that the book is published in English, even with some Chinglish in it. Electronics has truly become a global enterprise and it is encouraging to see contributions by other than Europeans and North Americans.

The last two-thirds of the book engages digital control of rectifiers (ac -> dc) and converters. The energy factor concept in late chapters is applied to ac and dc motor drives. The final chapter (12) covers power-factor correction, inverters, high-power transmission, and control of power quality.

This book has both the right amount and kind of math to be useful to design engineers. It builds on basic digital (z-plane) control theory and applies it to power electronics with the kind of analysis amenable to design. I like the book, and even am attracted to Fang Luo's novel converter topologies for some applications, which are also covered by him and Ye in Rashid's Power Electronics Handbook (2nd Ed.). This is a book that has a place in the power electronics engineer's library. As for the merits of energy factor as a new metric of performance, I leave you, the prospective reader, to decide that question.