Appendix C
Comments About EE338 (EE438)
by Prof. Bruce Buckman
(buckman@uts.cc.utexas.edu)
C.1 Introduction
During the discussion of ideas for the BSEE degree for the
2002-2004 catalog, an idea was suggested to add a one-hour
lab to EE338 to make it EE438. Part of the motivation was
to give BSEE students an earlier exposure to laboratory work.
In the 1998-2000 catalog, a BSEE student would not guaranteed
experience with building and analyzing circuits in a laboratory
until the fourth circuits course (EE321).
C.2 Lecture Content of EE438
The lecture content of EE338 would remain the same:
338. Electronic Circuits I. Basic components of
analog and digital integrated circuits; transistor models;
power and speed considerations; analysis and design of
electronic circuits. Prerequisite: Credit or registration
for EE323.
The only potential impact the content of the lectures in EE338
is the idea to move the coverage of two-port networks from
EE411 to EE338. This move was suggested by faculty who teach
EE411 because EE338 is a more natural setting to motivate the
application of two-port networks.
A summary of the discussion about EE411
is available.
C.3 Ideas for Laboratories for EE438
The basic idea is to move four of the labs from EE321 into the
the laboratory component for EE and modify them to match the
lecture content of EE338.
The framework for four labs is intended to be independent of
Moore's Law; i.e., the framework is independent of what circuits
and devices you want to measure.
The laboratories would work equally well when using one's favorite
device or circuit as the component to be analyzed.
My preliminary take on the topics for a lab for EE338
course goes something like this:
- Generation and acquisition of test signals
- Current, voltage, and impedance measurements
- 2-terminal devices
- 3-terminal devices
- Characterize the circuits in a mystery block box
- (Complex) Transfer function measurement
- Transfer function of lowpass RC circuit
- Magnitude and phase responses using sinusoidal and noise input
- Bode diagrams: breakpoints, connection to time response
- Spectrum measurements and analysis
- VirtualBench spectrum analyzer
- Amplitude and phase response measurements
The circuits used as examples on which these tests get done can some from
the usual collection of amplifiers, oscillators and filters. Which ones
get used would depend strongly on what gets covered in the lecture part of
the course.
Since EE313 may be taken concurrently with EE438, the laboratories
on measuring transfer functions and frequency responses are put at
the end to give time for that material to be covered in EE313.
The last two laboratories would make use of Bode plots, which have
been suggested to be covered in EE411. In the context of EE338,
the lecture could reinforce the usage of Bode plots in the context
of BJT amplifier response, which is bandpass, and then in the lab, the
students could generate Bode plots for a BJT amplifier.
Last updated 03/01/00.
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