Biographical note

Paul Tobin graduated from Kevin Street College of Technology (now the Dublin Institute of Technology) with honours in electronic engineering and went to work for the Irish National Telecommunications company. Here, he was involved in redesigning the analogue junction network replacing cables with PCM systems over optical fibres. He gave a paper on the design of this new digital junction network to the Institute of Engineers of Ireland in 1982 and was awarded a Smith testimonial for one of the best papers that year. Having taught part-time courses in telecommunications systems in Kevin Street, he was invited to apply for a full-time lecture post. He accepted and started lecturing full time in 1983. Over the last twenty years he has given courses in telecommunications, digital signal processing and circuit theory. He graduated with honours in 1998 having completed a taught MSc in various DSP topics and a project using the Wavelet Transform and neural networks to classify EEG (brain waves) associated with different mental tasks. He has been a ‘guest professor’ in the Institut Universitaire de Technologie (IUT), Bethune, France for the past four years giving courses in PSpice simulation topics. He wrote an unpublished book on PSpice but was persuaded by Joel Claypool (of Morgan and Claypool Publishers) at an engineering conference in Puerto Rico (July 2006), to break it into five PSpice books. One of the books introduces a novel way of teaching DSP using PSpice. There are over 500 worked examples in the five books covering a range of topics with sufficient theory and simulation results from basic circuit theory right up to advanced communication principles. Most of these worked example circuit have been thoroughly ‘student tested’ by Irish and International students and should mean little or no errors but alas. . . He married Marie and has four sons and his hobbies include playing modern jazz on double bass and piano but grew up playing G-banjo and guitar. His other hobby is flying and obtained a private pilots license (PPL) in the early 80’s.