Course Description:
This course is designed to discuss fundamental principles for the analysis and design of analog circuits and the practical considerations in integrated circuit design. Students will learn to design, analyze and evaluate amplifiers as an essential integrated circuit building block. Advanced amplifiers/analog circuit layout techniques with case studies will also be introduced. By providing hands-on practice with one real advanced VLSI CMOS process using industrial EDA tools, students can deeply understand how to design practical integrated circuits and make real-world engineering tradeoffs. This course will be assessed with assignments, presentations, and projects.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge in analog circuit design.
- Design the common analog circuit building blocks with practical considerations.
- Design and simulate analog circuits using industrial simulation tools with real-world CMOS processes.
Course Description:
This is an introductory course on integrated circuits research methodology and applications. It aims to aid the students in building up an internationally competitive research goal by understanding the state-of-the-art trends in applications and technologies and systematically formulating a feasible schedule with available resources, to approach the research goals. Preparation of related academic publications and system-level case studies of advanced integrated circuits and systems will be organized for the students to digest and present them. The course aims to provide the students with a set of essential engineering skills for research in the area of the integrated circuit.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge on starting integrated circuits research.
- Identify the trends of integrated circuits for practical applications.
- Recognize the impact of integrated circuit solutions in a global and societal context.
Course Description:
This is an introductory course in digital integrated circuits. It covers topics from MOS inverters and different logic families. The student will learn how to model interconnect wires and design optimization with respect to a number of metrics: cost, reliability, speed and power. This course also covers sequential and dynamic logic circuit design, timing considerations, and clocking approaches, as well as the design of large system blocks, including memories, such as D-flip-flop and SRAM. This customized course from bottom-up based, which starts from the fundamental techniques for the design and analysis of digital circuits. Then, it provides a detailed understanding of basic logic synthesis and analysis algorithms and enables students to apply this knowledge in the design of digital systems and EDA tools. The course aims to give a basic idea of the digital integrated circuit design. The students will have a hands-on experience in combinational circuit optimization (two-level and multi-level synthesis), sequential circuit optimization (state encoding, retiming), timing analysis, testing, and logic verification through the lab work.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge in analog circuit design.
- Apply common digital circuit building blocks, such as logic gates, adder and SRAM, with practical considerations.
- Design and simulate analog circuits using industrial simulation tools with real-world CMOS processes.
Course Description:
This course will provide an introduction to the various type of Data Conversion System. The performance characterization of Data Converters will be presented, and various type of data converters (including Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog) will be discussed. This course can be served as the beginning course in the field of Data Conversion and Signal Processing in the area of Analog IC Design.
This course enables students to have:
- Recognize and analyze the definitions of performance parameters for data converters, in datasheet and research papers.
- Design the various types of data converters.
- Implement the systems above using EDA tools widely adopted in IC industries.
Course Description:
The Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System and Distribution Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS/DFACTS) are a new converging technology based on the Power Electronics, Control Theory, and Power System for the revolution of ever more efficient control and better utilization of power and energy in the existing systems. The FACTS offers an opportunity to enhance the controllability, stability, and power transfer capability of AC transmission systems with the fastest control speed. DFACTS is the extended modern technique of FACTS to focus on the Custom issues or power line conditioning in the distribution site as well as the Information Technology’s Electricity Issues.
This course enables students to have:
- Recognize the basic concepts, fundamental operational principles, advantages, and disadvantages of different FACTS/DFACTS devices.
- Identify the control strategies of some selected FACTS/DFACTS devices.
- Present the operation principles of selected FACTS/DFACTS devices.
Course Description:
This course starts with a single transistor, with introductions on transistor fabrication and electrical characteristics. Then, a single-stage analog amplifier will be analyzed, design and analyses of a two-stage amplifier will be also discussed. After we know the analog integrated circuit (IC) design basics, we will learn the basic components of power management ICs: low-dropout regulators, inductor-based and switched-capacitor DC-DC converters. Last but not least, wireless power transfer circuits and systems will be briefly introduced.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge in power management integrated circuits design.
- Design and simulate power management ICs using EDA tools with CMOS process.
- Present the design project results in both orally and in IEEE-style reports.
Course Description:
This is an introductory course on multidisciplinary topics covering microelectronics, biomedical engineering, and digital microfluidics. As a special topic course, it will focus on the principles and biomedical applications of digital microfluidics, which utilizes electronic signals to manipulate liquid droplets on an array of micro-electrodes. The course also covers the introduction of the fabrication technology in a clean room related to MEMS and soft-lithography. The coating and etching techniques on silicon wafers or glass chips will be introduced and practiced in this course.
This course enables students to have:
- Introduce state-of-the-art knowledge in the development of biomedical engineering.
- Design microfluidic chips and implement chips into microfluidic systems, including PDMS-based channel microfluidics and electronic-based digital microfluidics.
- Apply microfluidic systems in biomedical applications.
Course Description:
This is an introductory course in the high-frequency and high-speed systems and circuits of both wireless and wireline tailored for ECE students. It covers topics from basic circuit techniques in the data path of both wireless and wireline, such as a low-noise amplifier, mixer, linear equalizer, non-linear equalizer, automatic gain control amplifier, clock and data recovery circuit, to basic circuit techniques in the clock path, for example, PLL, VCO and divider. Also, we brief more recent techniques, such as non-contact communication and RF+BB communication, with special attention to hardware aspects and wireline applications. The course aims to offer students a set of modern wideband system and circuit solutions and the basic ideas and intuition behind them, emphasizing hands-on experience through practical examples such as high-frequency and high-speed circuit implementation and case studies with Cadence/MATLAB.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge of high-frequency and high-speed systems and circuits in both wireless and wireline designs.
- Identify the common wireless/wireline circuit building blocks with practical considerations in the data and clock paths.
- Design and simulate high-frequency and high-speed circuits using industrial simulation tools with real-world CMOS processes.
Course Description:
This course provides the necessary systematic approach methodology in generic analog IC designs. The topics covered include the technique in a systematic method in analyzing and designing the amplifiers and opamps, such as using the scaled current and multiplier techniques, the impedance rules-of-thumb, and layout-oriented amplifier design techniques. Advanced layout techniques in detail, the analog IC simulations methodology, etc., will be covered. Project-based evaluations will be the primary assessments of the students’ performance.
This course enables students to have:
- Recognize the systematic design approach on how to design amplifiers and opamps.
- Explain the theories for simulations.
- Implement master a practical circuit design project.
Course Description:
This is an introductory course in machine learning tailored for IME students. It covers topics from classification, regression and statistical signal processing, to more recent techniques such as neural networks and deep learning. It also covers the analog approximate computing integrated circuit design considerations for acceleration purposes. The course aims to offer students the fundamental concepts in advanced artificial intelligence theory with an emphasis on hands-on experience through practical examples such as intelligent hardware system implementation and case studies with MATLAB/Python. The verified algorithm can be further implemented on an FPGA for applications such as image/audio recognition.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge in machine learning and deep learning.
- Design analog accelerators with practical circuit considerations.
- Design and verify neural networks for image/audio classification problems using MATLAB/Python.
The sensors and their interfaces with the circuits are important parts of electronic devices. They capture vital information from the real world. This course covers the design of sensors and interfacing circuits in the CMOS process. The student will learn to design the sensors for different sensing purposes and their front-end interfaces to process the acquired signals at both system- and circuit-level. Different design considerations will be discussed, such as noise, power consumption, distortion/nonlinearity. Fabrication of the micro-electro-mechanical systems and their integration with the CMOS integrated circuits will also be covered.
This course enables students to have:
- Design fundamental building blocks in the CMOS process for signal readout and sensing system.
- Implement different sensing elements (thermal, capacitive, resistive, etc.) in the CMOS process and discover their potential applications.
- Simulate the sensing circuits and systems in CMOS process using simulation tools and realize their limitations.
Course Description:
As enabled by powerful technology, microelectronics have become essential in our daily lives. They are also used in various fields such as healthcare, environmental monitoring, robotics or entertainment, etc. This introductory course in microelectronics is tailored for the Internet of Things (IoTs), which teaches how to use microelectronics circuits to interact with the environment through sensors and communicate wirelessly with the other devices. It covers topics from evaluation and implementation of sensor interface, data conversion, signal processing, and device communications. This customized course from bottom-up based, which starts by introducing the fundamental building blocks in microelectronics for the IoT. Then, followed by system and architectural interface considerations. Finally, the students can realize a basic IoT system based on the available microelectronic module. The course aims to give a basic idea of the key microelectronic building blocks for the IoT application. The students will have hands-on experience through practical design examples and case studies using the microelectronic module.
This course enables students to have:
- Apply the essential knowledge in basic building blocks and system of the Internet of Things (IoT) system.
- Introduce the practical considerations of IoT systems, especially emphasized on sensing and data communication.
- Design and verify the various IoT systems with existing modules.
Course Description:
An independent and original research study under the supervision of a faculty staff member. An academic thesis is a scholarly written document of original research on a particular topic consistent with every detail of the research methodology. The study could result in a technical publication or a presentation at a professional meeting.
This course enables students to have:
- An ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering appropriate to the degree discipline.
- Apply knowledge and recognize specialist topics in microelectronics research.
- Design the integrated circuits and conduct research.
- Create innovative circuit and system techniques in the development of microelectronic integrated circuits.
- Use computer-aided design and analysis techniques appropriate to microelectronics engineering.