A Laboratory For An Electronic Systems Design Course

With the help of the Analog Devices company in the form of a number of their integrated circuits donated in the Summer of 2000, a new laboratory for the EE 4330 Electronic Systems Design course has been developed and was taught for the first time in the Fall of 2000. Only a few integrated circuits from other companies are used in this laboratory. One of the main criteria in selecting integrated circuits for this laboratory was that they should be currently widely used by designers of electronic systems. It was also important that laboratory systems with these integrated circuits do not need many external components and may be assembled by the student as a part of the laboratory experiment. Other conditions were that the laboratory experiments had to be inspiring and an excellent laboratory manual would be available. It was possible to achieve these goals because the EE 4330 course had quite a good laboratory prior to the Fall of 2000. The new laboratory was evaluated as superb by the teaching assistant and the students. This paper describes the place and content of the Electronic Systems Design course in the electrical engineering curriculum. The laboratory is a very important part of this course. Lists of laboratory experiments and a set of instruments on every bench are included. Examples of laboratory tasks are also presented.