Acknowledgements

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Prof. Belén Pérez-Verdú and Prof. Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez from the University of Sevilla. We are indebted to them for so many things we learnt, not only related to the contents of this book, but also many life values and skills we have put in practice throughout our professional careers, first as their PhD students, then as senior researchers, and later as university professors. Our warm and special acknowledgement and dedication of this book goes to them.

We are also particularly grateful to our colleagues at the Institute of Microelectronics of Sevilla and the Department of Electronics and Electromagnetism of the University of Sevilla, especially to Prof. Francisco Fernández, Dr. Manuel Delgado, Dr. Rafael Castro, Dr. Rafael Domínguez, Dr. Oscar Guerra, Mr. Joaquín Ceballos, and Mr. Miguel Angel Lagos. Among them, we are especially grateful to our friend Dr. Fernando Medeiro, with whom we took our first steps in the fascinating world of sigma-delta modulators, working side by side in a number of research and industrial projects. Thank you very much Fernando!

We would also like to acknowledge our past and present undergraduate and graduate students, especially Dr. Jesús Ruíz-Amaya, Mr. Rafael Romay, Dr. Ramón Tortosa, Dr. Alonso Morgado, Dr. Edwin Becerra, Mr. Gerardo García, Mr. Luis Guerrero-Linares, and Mr. Sohail Asghar. Some pieces of material used for the preparation of this book have been adapted from their PhD works, including a number of examples and case studies. Specifically, the first version of SIMSIDES—the time-domain behavioral simulator described in this book— was developed by Dr. Ruíz-Amaya as part of his graduate thesis.

We would like to give our thanks to the staff at Wiley, in particular to the editors Liz Wingett, Laura Bell, Richard Davies, and Peter Mitchell, as well as to the anonymous reviewers of the book proposal for their constructive and valuable comments and suggestions, which became very useful for us to make this manuscript a reality, trying to keep a good trade-off between accuracy (resolution) and time to publication (speed). This is indeed a well-known compromise for us as analog designers. We also appreciate our discussions over all these years with so many experts in the field of sigma-delta converters, with whom we had the opportunity to meet at diverse conferences and technical meetings. Many of them were sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society.

In addition to all these great people, our work has been always supported by a number of National and International Research and Industrial Projects. More recently, our research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (with support from the European Regional Development Fund) under contract TEC2010-14825/MIC.

Finally, our most grateful thanks go for our families. None of this would have been possible without their love, patience, confidence, and support. Thank you so much for everything!