I had to use this book for my last semester in electrical engineering. It is really interesting, well explained and complete for a concise introduction about control engineering and design of controllers.

All you need to follow the text are basic notions in engineer’s mathematics (a bit of calculus and algebra). A few chapters offer reviews of important notions (transfert functions, state variable modeling, differential equations, …) Then, you get to the essential, control theory.

The book is well divided. First chapters cover mathematical notions you have to master in order to succeed in the next part (signal flow diagrams, block diagrams, a bit of mechanic). Then, a few chapters introduce control loops, poles and zeros interpretation (explained very well with a lot of graphs examples). A single chapter covers root loci drawing. Great explanations about controllers are complete and easy to understand. The last chapter is kept for design only with A LOT of examples for PID, phase-lag, filters, etc.

Emphasis is made on computer design with examples all along the book. The CD included offers a few useful tools to use for design with Matlab.

The author knows his subject more than anyone else. He has good experience in design and the text is well written. A must for anyone studying the subject.