Development Of A Doppler Radar Experiment Board For Use In Microwave Circuits And Electronics Courses

The development of a Doppler radar experiment board and associated course content, observations from their first implementation in the fall 2009 offering of the microwave circuits course at Montana State University and plans for their revision and use in an upper division analog electronics course are described. The motivation for incorporating the experiment board into the microwaves course is to provide students a bridge between their understanding of the basics of microwave component design and the implementation of components into a microwave system. The trend toward higher levels of abstraction in the microwaves field suggests the growing importance of system-level understanding, as fewer students will continue on to component-level design in industry. A continuous wave Doppler system was selected as a vehicle for the component-to-system level transition due to the relative simplicity of the system and its common use in speed monitoring applications. The attempt to combine both component and system-level experiences into a single course was necessitated by the fact that the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in which the concept is being deployed has the resources to offer but a single course in microwave engineering. Thus it is expected that programs which seek to provide students a rather broad sampling of microwave circuitry and systems in a single course may benefit from the chosen approach.