The goals of this course are: (1) to introduce basic concepts in Electrical and Computer Engineering in an integrated manner, (2) to motivate basic concepts in the context of real applications, and (3) to illustrate a logical way of thinking about problems and their solutions. Course exposes the student to the following list of selected topics from Electrical and Computer Engineering: Decomposing a complex system into its subsystems; applying basic circuits laws (e.g. Kirchhoff’s current and voltage laws, Ohm’s law) to analyze simple circuits that include resistors and sources; using piecewise linear behavioral models of active devices such as transistors, diodes, and Zener diodes for circuit analysis; analyzing basic circuits that include resistors, transistors, and diodes; understanding the operation of logic gates such as AND, OR, NAND, and NOR.

In the lab the students will analyze and measure simple circuits such as series and parallel connections, work with transistors as switches and build elementary logic gates.

Electrical and physical characteristics of resistance, inductance, and capacitance. DC and AC circuits analysis. Energy and power relationships of circuit parameters. Circuits resonance phenomenon. Transient response in simple circuits. Electrical measurements. (Laboratory included.)

Network circuit analysis, dependent voltage sources, source transformation, linearity. Thevenin’s Theorem, theory of inductors, capacitors, and impedance, fundamental waveforms, time domain response, and Laplace Transforms. Circuit problems will be solved using the computer-aided circuit analysis program SPICE.

Sinusoidal analysis, power measurements, three-phase circuits, complex frequency and network functions, resonance, scaling, frequency response, two-port networks, Fourier Series and Transforms.

Fundamentals of making electronic measurements. Students will learn how to properly use various instruments and how to troubleshoot in case of problems. Safety issues will be covered.

Periodic signal analysis and electrical network filters. Sinusoidal frequency and phase response.

Cascaded high gain amplifier systems. Differential amplifier circuits and applications. Integrated circuit systems design. Operational amplifier oscillators, integrating amplifiers, and filters. Cathode ray tube theory, oscilloscope circuits. Laboratory included.

Number systems, codes, and truth tables. Logical hardware devices such as gates, inverters, tristate logic, flip-flops, and latches. Digital Circuits such as arithmetic units, comparators, code converters, ripple and ring counters, and shift registers. Design of combinational and sequential digital circuits. Laboratory included.

Finite-state machines in process control. Assembly language programming of the WDC 65816 16 bit microprocessor and its hardware system implementation. Dynamic RAM read/write and DMA access, hardware interrupts, I/O port addressing and peripheral interface design. Microprocessor addressing modes, op codes, and arithmetic computation. Laboratory included.

Techniques of information transfer via electrical signals. Amplitude frequency, phase and pulse/modulation and demodulation. Fourier series representation of periodic signals, power spectral density, and the bandwidth of communication signals. Correlation functions. Laboratory included.

Advanced study of electronic devices and their application to linear, non-linear, and digital circuits. Transistors, FET’s filters, oscillators, amplifiers, A/D, D/A, some integrated circuits, and VLSI’s. Software design problems emphasized.

An introduction to a hierarchical design methodology of VLSI. Study of basic logic elements and design methods in nMOS and CMOS. The physics of MOS devices and the fabrication process. Design rules and computation of circuit parameters from layout. System level design.

Computer network data protocols, modulation methods, traffic and signaling.

Senior project course in analog sensors, data acquisition and an introduction to digital signal processing. Analog-to-digital conversion, sampling rate, digital derivation and integration, and smoothing and thresholding of analog sensors. Assembly language software for the process control and signal processing. Laboratory included.

Verilog hardware description language and its applications to digital hardware system design.

Senior project course in digital data and telecommunications systems. Baseband and bandpass binary signaling systems, and time and frequency division multiplexing. Assembly language software for error correction and compaction of data and time division multiplexing projects. Laboratory included.

Under special circumstances, students may complete a regular course during semesters the course is not offered to meet prerequisite or graduation requirements with department chairperson approval. An instructor supervises the student with the approval of the department chairperson.

Project assigned with the approval of the department chairperson and conducted under the supervision of a faculty sponsor.