To equip students with the knowledge and skills to design, build, measure and analyse a range of analogue and digital electronics circuits.
Review of Semiconductor technologies
Structure of an atom. Types of semiconductor materials. Covalent bonding. Electron current and hole current. N-Type and P-Type semiconductors. Characteristics of a forward and reverse biased PN Junction. Review of diodes, zener diodes LEDs, transistors and their applications.
Thyristors, Triacs and Diacs
Construction and principle of operation of thyristors, diacs and triacs. Voltage/current characteristics. Latching characteristics, latching and holding currents. Triggering and switching off techniques in d.c. and a.c. circuits. Thyristor, diac and triac applications.
Operational Amplifiers
Characteristics of ideal and practical op-amps. Bandwidth and frequency response. Open and closed loop operation of an op-amp. Negative feedback in op-amps. Basic op-amp circuits including: Inverting, non-inverting, differential and summing amplifiers. The instrumentation amplifer. Op-amp as a current to voltage converter. Op-amp as a voltage to current converter. Op-amp applications.
Introduction to Digital Logic
Basic operational characteristics and parameters of TTL and CMOS families. Data sheet interpretation. Comparison of TTL and CMOS families. Power consumption of logic families including consideration of power supply. Basic logic gates: the inverter. AND, OR, NAND, NOR, exclusive-OR and exclusive-NOR gates. Truth tables.
Boolean Algebra and Logic Functions
Review of number systems and codes. Boolean operations and expressions. Rules and laws of Boolean algebra. DeMorgans theorems. Simplification of logic circuits using Boolean algebra and Karnaugh maps. Logic functions including: Adders, encoders, decoders, code convertors.
Digital Logic Circuits
Flip-flop circuits: latches. S-R, D and J-K type flip flops, edge and pulse triggering of flip-flops, operating characteristics of flip-flops, one-shots, astable multivibrators and timers, flip-flop applications. Counter circuits: asynchronous counters, synchronous counters, up-down synchronous counters, counter decoding, counter timing diagrams, counter modulus, counter applications. Shift Registers: basic data movement in shift registers, control of data movement in shift registers, types of shift register including: SISO, SIPO, PISO, PIPO. Shift register applications.
Analogue to Digital and Digital to Analogue Conversion
Binary-weighted-input D/A converter. R/2R ladder D/A converter. Flash A/D converter. Ramp A/D coverter. Tracking A/D converter. Single and dual slope A/D converters. Successive approximation A/D converter. A/D and D/A applications.
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Formal Examination | 50 |
| Other Assessment(s) | 50 |