NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

                                

COURSE TITLE: ECE 270 Applications of Electronic Devices

CATALOG DESCRIPTION: DC and AC networks, rectifiers, transistor amplifiers, feedback and operational amplifiers, digital electronics, and microprocessors.  Not open to electrical or computer engineering majors. 

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK: M. A. Plonus, Electronics and Communications for Scientists and Engineers, pp. 415, Harcourt/Academic Press, 2001.

REFERENCE TEXT: G. Rizzoni, Principles and Applications of Electrical Engineering, 3rd edition, pp. 976, McGraw-Hill, 2000.

                                      R. J. Smith, Electronics: Circuits and Devices, 3rd edition, pp 476, Wiley, 1987.

COURSE INSTRUCTOR:  Prof. M. A. Plonus

Office:L310, Tel: 491-3445, E-mail: plonus@northwestern.edu; Office hours: MWF 4-5.

TEACHING ASSISTANTS: Patrachart Komolkiti: pek@ece.nwu.edu; Jason Ng: jng@ece.nwu.edu. Offc. Hours: W 3-5, Th 3-6.

COURSE GOALS:  To provide the non-electrical engineering student with a foundation for understanding the basic principles of electrical and electronic systems. Nine laboratory experiments complement the lectures and give the students hands-on experience. This course should help provide a solid basis for further studies, whether in the classroom or on the job.  Because of the necessarily wide scope of the course topics and the time limitations of our 10-week quarter, the course is fast-paced.  Success requires the student to attend all lectures and labs and to keep up with the reading and homework assignments.

PREREQUISITES: Mathematics 214-2 and Physics 135-2 or equivalent.

WEEKLY PLAN: 3 lectures + 1 homework/discussion session on Tuesday.

GRADES: The following formula will be used to compute the final grade:

Homeworks – 20%; Labs – 20%; Exams – 60% [midterm on Friday, April 26th (30%)), and final examination on June 11  (30% and cumulative),

as scheduled by the university]

One 8½ by 11 cheat-sheet (1-sided) allowed for the midterm. Since the final is cumulative, in addition to an 8½ by 11 cheat sheet (1-sided),

you can also bring the midterm cheat sheet.

 

DETAILED COURSE TOPICS

Week 1: Ideal sources, sign convention, circuit elements: R, L, and C. Ohm’s Law, practical sources, Kirchhoff’s current and voltage laws, voltage and current dividers. Electrical networks.

Week 2: Node and mesh analysis. Thevenin and Norton equivalent circuits. Maximum power transfer. Transients and time constants in RC and RL circuits. Complex numbers, sinusoids and phasors

Week 3: Impedance, AC circuit analysis. RC and RL in Hi-pass and Low-pass filters. Resonance and Band-pass. Q-factor and bandwidth. Power in ac circuits, complex power. Average and RMS values. Power transfer, power factor. Transformers, impedance matching. Diodes: rectification and power supplies.

Week 4: Practical diode circuits: clipping and clamping circuits, Zener diode voltage regulation, SCR’s. Conduction in semiconductor devices, the pn junction. Rectifier equation. PN junction and the transistor. Basics of bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) and field effect transistors (FETs).

Week 5: Characteristic curves for BJTs, FETs, and MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors). The transistor as an amplifier: design of load line, selecting of operating point by biasing (self-bias and fixed-bias circuits), and graphical methods for gain.

Week 6: Equivalent circuit of transistor for small-signal amplification: BJT/FET as current/voltage-controlled current amplifier. Bandpass of amplifier: midband gain and deterioration of gain at low and high frequencies. Power amplifiers (class A and push-pull). Analysis of a system: the superheterodyne AM receiver.  

Week 7: Introduction to operational amplifiers (OP-AMPS). Inverting and non-inverting amplifiers, unit gain buffers, comparators, integrating and differentiating OP-Amps..

Week 8: A/D converters, differential and instrumentation amplifiers. Combinatorial logic circuits: gates, Boolean algebra, adders, encoders/decoders.

Week 9: Sequential logic circuits: flip-flops, shift registers, counters.  Memory: RAM cells, RAM and ROM.

Week 10 : Hex numbers and memory addressing. CPU and microprocessors.

           

LABORATORY PROJECTS

Week 1: No Lab

Week 2: Introduction to the laboratory instruments: Function Generator and Oscilloscope. Lab1

Week 3: D.C. Electrical Measurements, Ohm’s Law, voltage and current dividers. Lab 2

Week 4: Time and Frequency Domains – Circuit Responses: Time-domain (transient) response of RC and RL circuits, Frequency-domain (sinusoidal) circuit response of circuits comprised of these elements. Lab 3

Week 5: X-Y display techniques: Semiconductor diode characteristics and circuits. Lab 4

Week 6: Transistors and Amplifier Design: Bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), biasing and use in amplifiers. Lab 5

Week 7: Field effect transistors (FETs), biasing and use in amplifiers. Lab 6

Week 8: Operational Amplifiers: Inverting, Non-inverting, Summing Amplifier; Integrator, Sine and Square Wave Oscillator. Lab 7

Week 9: Digital Circuits – Part I and II. Lab 8

Week 10: Microprocessors. Lab 9

 

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS

 Homework will be assigned Monday, Wednesday, Friday, collected Friday, returned Monday and discussed Tuesday. Homework problems test concepts taught in class. See the following table for the reading and homework assignments:

Week 1: pp 1-22        Problems 4,5,6,7,8

                    22-33                      16,24,26

                    33-37                      27,28,32

Week 2: pp 37-43      Problems 34,35,36,38

                    49-58                      40,43,48

                    58-72                      1,3,8,12 (chpr.2)

Week 3: pp 72-78      Problems 14,16,17

                    78-84                      20,22

                   91-97                       37,43,44

Week 4: pp 98-104    Problems 47,2,4

                    111-120                  5,8,9

               Midterm

Week 5: pp 120-126  Problems 10,12,6(p150)

                    126-149                   7,9

                    155-168                   13

Week 6: review           Problems 16,17,18

               pp 169-178                  21, 1,2,3(p198)

                    178-198                  4,9,13

Week 7: review           Problems 14,17,30

               pp 203-208                  31,38,39,1(p230)

               review                          2,4,5

Week 8: pp 208-225  Problems 7,10     

                     225-230                 11,13

                     235-248                 14,21,25

Week 9: Memorial Day

                     248-254                 1,2,4,5,6

                     254-263                 7,8

Week 10: pp 263-273               9,10,11

                      279-285               12,14

 

COURSE OBJECTIVES: When a student completes this course, s/he should be able to:

1. Analyze resistive circuits having independent and dependent sources using both node and mesh techniques.

2. Develop Thevenin’s and Norton’s equivalent circuits for resistive circuits containing independent and/or dependent sources.

3. Analyze the first-order transient behavior of resistor-inductor (RL) and resistor- capacitor (RC) circuits having initial conditions on inductor current or capacitor voltage.

4. Analyze the sinusoidal steady-state behavior of RLC circuits using phasors, impedance concepts, node and mesh analysis, and Thevenin’s and Norton’s equivalent circuits.

6. Estimate the frequency response of simple filters using Bode plots.

7. Calculate real and reactive power and power factor in ac circuits. Design simple power-factor correction for inductive loads.

8. Analyze and design simple ac circuits with transformers to achieve conjugate impedance matching.

9. Analyze and design simple circuits such as rectifiers and clippers involving diodes (including Zener diodes) using diode equivalent circuits and the load-line technique.

10. Analyze and design simple circuits involving BJTs for the operating point, small-signal low-frequency gain, and large-signal switching behavior using BJT equivalent circuits and the load-line technique.

11. Analyze and design simple circuits involving MOSFETs for the operating point, small-signal low-frequency gain, and large-signal switching behavior using MOSFET equivalent circuits and the load-line technique.

12. Analyze and design simple circuits involving operational amplifiers used to implement amplification, signal summation, differentiation, integration, and frequency filtering. Use of feedback to obtain more stable gain. Design using OP-AMPs simple sinusoidal and square-wave oscillators.

13. Why digital? Digital signals in an analog world. Digital signal representation. Combinatorial and sequential logic circuits.

14. Take a problem statement, construct a truth table, write a logic expression for it, simplify logic expressions using Boolean algebra and build a minimum-gate logic circuit. Understand logic gates and build logic circuits such as counters, shift registers.

 

ABET CONTENT CATEGORY:  100% Engineering (Design component).

 

COURSE POLICY: 1.Attendance at all lectures is expected.

2. All homework and labs must be turned in.

3. No make-ups for midterm and final.

4. Points deducted for late homework.

5. Help for homework, consult the TA’s during counseling hours. Help for lecture material and concepts consult the instructor during office hours.