Circuit Design Course Research Articles

A Subthreshold Biased CMOS Ring Oscillator Model Design in 180-nm Process

In this paper, a 180-nm CMOS ring oscillator design, made with halo-implanted transistors and operating in the weak inversion region, is proposed, based on an undergraduate integrated circuit design course methodology for building logic gates and comparing simulated results with reviewed literature data. Halo-implanted channel transistors have a steeper and less distorted voltage characteristic curve compared to uniformly doped channel ones, which makes them a more appropriate option when designing asynchronous digital integrated circuits aimed at low bias and low power. Three gate models were created using weak inversion and pull-up and pull-down networks made with halo-implanted transistors. The results of the study and simulation of the three inverter digital gate topologies showed that the NOT inverter model, as expected, had a higher frequency than the NAND and NOR inverter models. The ring oscillators made with the NOT inverter came up with an 8.25-MHz switching frequency as well as a dynamic power close to 270 nW. A comparison with other ring oscillators from previous studies is also shown.

Work-Integrated and Cooperative Learning Effects on Micro-Electronics Design Classes

Cooperative learning and work-integrated learning are the latest trends in information delivery at high schools and universities. In cooperative learning, teachers organize students' interactions and educate them to work in small groups to enhance each other's learning. Whereas, work-integrated learning, is a type of experiential learning that allows students to participate in real-world work during their studies. Both approaches help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge gained from classrooms and professional market needs. Electrical engineering is a field that could highly benefit from such a scheme. Having to be continuously up-to-date with the latest advances in the field of micro-electronics is difficult. Consequently, Several challenges are imposed on faculty members and academics who teach micro-electronics circuit design courses in electrical engineering for senior undergraduate or graduate students. This paper presents a case study of the apparent benefits and effectiveness of cooperative learning and work-integrated learning in the Electronics II and VLSI classes offered at a university. Furthermore, it aids programs in electrical engineering to meet ABET students' outcome (4).

A Blended Lab on Phase-Sensitive Demodulation for Undergraduate Electronic Circuit Design Course

This paper proposes the blended lab concept for mitigating the lack of practical lab sessions due to constraints on hardware resources or pandemic such as COVID. Virtual labs, which use computer aided simulation to enhance learning experience, can replace some aspects of the practical lab activities, but not all. Deficiency in practical skills caused by the lack of practical lab sessions can be observed evidently from post-pandemic students. The proposed blended lab combines computer-based simulation with practical activities that can be carried out readily at home. This concept has been applied in an undergraduate electronic circuit design course at Manchester and Tianjin. Students use mobile phones as simple signal generators/scopes to visualise sound/light/audio-jack signals from circuits built on breadboard at home. This approach has proved to enhance student experience when physical lab is limited.

An Approach of Project-Based Learning: Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Industry Needs in Teaching Integrated Circuit Design Course

In teaching an integrated circuit (IC) design course, many benefits can be gained by offering an industry-relevant project associated with a training to a bundle of electronic design automation (EDA) tools and design methodologies. However, few open-source projects were able to cover the key qualifications needed by industry. Therefore, this article proposes an approach of project-based learning (PBL), aiming at bridging the gap between the industry needs and the learning outcomes from academia. Specifically, this article first conducts an investigation on basic qualifications necessary for entry-level IC designers. By summarizing those results as a specification, the development, implementation, and assessment to an open source project is presented to include the latest EDA tools and methodologies needed by IC design companies, as well as the fundamental knowledge and skills of the course outcomes. The effectiveness of this work is evaluated by the analysis of students’ final exam results using <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -tests. It shows that students who had participated in the project achieved higher levels of acquired knowledge to the design on ICs. Student survey and evaluation also demonstrate positive effect on student achievement with the PBL approach. Further, the public availability of this project has a big potential to offer a framework to practical courses and improve students’ knowledge and skills in many topics, such as computer architecture and micro-systems.

Development of a remote laboratory for an electronic circuit design and analysis course with increased accessibility by using speech recognition technology

AbstractWhen the curricula of engineering undergraduate programs are examined, it can be seen that experimentation plays a very important role and the learning outcomes of the courses are mostly dependent on practical abilities. However, there may be a few who cannot use their hands permanently or temporarily among the students who are attending these courses. Therefore, the participation of disabled students in this part of the course has always been a problem. In this paper, a remote laboratory application that aims to increase the accessibility of electronic circuit design and analysis courses by using speech recognition technology is introduced. This laboratory is designed for hands‐free operation and enables students to analyze the electronic circuits by speaking. Google Web Speech API was used for speech recognition and the user interface was designed using Adobe Flash Professional. The parameters are sent to the ASP.NET page by using ActionScript 2.0 programming language. The application developed by using C# programming language enables programming the experimental hardware that includes a signal generator, a Raspberry Pi 2 with a camera, an oscilloscope, and a new test card. In the Raspberry Pi 2, Python programming language was used to select the desired experiment from those present on the board and to control digitally programmable circuit components such as digital potentiometers or parameters such as the DC reference voltage level. When the student successfully completes the predefined experimental procedures, an automatically generated e‐mail is sent to the instructor including the student's username, log‐in time, the oscilloscope screenshots, and ideal experimental results.

Teaching Digital Circuit Design With a 3-D Video Game: The Impact of Using In-Game Tools on Students’ Performance

Contribution: This article presents the design of in-game tools to support learning within an educational video game and investigates the impact of tool usage on engineering students' performance in an introductory digital circuit design course. Background: Despite the level of appeal of video games to college students, there is a lack of empirical evidence of how to design effective games to address educational goals. One component of games that can serve as a support mechanism to help players be successful in the game is the in-game tools. This article investigates the impact of three types of instructional in-game tools on engineering students' performance on digital circuit design tasks. Research Questions: To what extent do different types of in-game tools (content-specific instructional guidance tool, scaffold, and productivity tool) contribute to players' performance on digital circuit design tasks? Methodology: This article presents the design of an educational video game to teach digital circuits design. It presents three discrete types of in-game tools and investigates their impact on students' learning performance. For this investigation, multiple regression analysis was used to show the relations between the tools and learning performance (N=176 ). Findings: The results show the player use of tools that provide content-specific instructional guidance and scaffolding for troubleshooting is correlated with their learning performance. The productivity tool did not significantly contribute to the learning performance of the students.

System-Driven Circuit Design Course in Ireland [Chapters

System-Driven Circuit Design Course in Ireland A two-day short course, Short-Course on Selected Topics in Mixed-Signal IC Design, was hosted by the Circuits and Systems Research Centre (www.csrc.ie), University of Limerick, Ireland, on 7-8 September 2017. The seminar attracted 65 delegates from countries such as the Czech Republic, Spain, India, and the United Kingdom. An overview of the event is presented.

Teaching Reform on Digital Circuit and Logic Design Course

Owning strong theoretical and practical performance, the “digital circuit and logic design” course plays a vital role in the electronic information speciality. Although the digital circuit and logic design course emphasizes the practical characteristics, there still ignores the linking with other courses in teaching process. In this paper, the teaching reform program is put forward by the project-driven methods to embody the course characteristics of the engineering application, then the course teaching reform indicates that it can better stimulate the students’ learning interest, train the students’ creative thinking and improve the students’ entrepreneurial ability, then train the excellent electronic information talents.

Experiences in Digital Circuit Design Courses: A Self-Study Platform for Learning Support

The synthesis of digital circuits is a basic skill in all the bachelor programmes around the ICT area of knowledge, such as Computer Science, Telecommunication Engineering or Electrical Engineering. An important hindrance in the learning process of this skill is that the existing educational tools for the design of circuits do not allow the student to validate if his design satisfies the specification. Furthermore, an automatic feedback is essential in order to help students to fix incorrect designs. In this paper, we propose an online platform where the students can design and verify their circuits with an individual and automatic feedback. The technical aspects of the platform and the designed verification tool are presented. The impact of the platform on the learning process of the students is illustrated by analyzing the student performance on the course where the platform has been used. Results on the utilization of the platform versus the success rate and marks in the final exam are presented and compared with previous semesters.

Case-Based Instruction in Digital Integrated Circuit Design Courses for Non-Major Students

In this paper, a preliminary study using case-based teaching methodology in a digital IC design course is described. The proposed case-based course consists of ten lecture topics with hands-on labs and two projects. Each topic covers a design case example which contains illustrations of physical structure, hardware description language (HDL) codes, truth tables, waveform, and comments. Students can comprehend the essence of HDL by referring to physical logic gates, truth table, and waveform with HDL codes. This helps students to understand the abstract nature of HDL-based design flow especially for non-EE major undergraduates. To illustrate the effect of case-based teaching methodology instruction for non-major undergraduates, a specific class was constructed by 56% major and 44% non-major undergraduates. At the end of the course, both major and non-major undergraduates verified all labs and projects successfully. The questionnaire statistics show that most of the students like the course with case-based guidance. They all look forward to taking other similar engineering courses in the future.

Modeling, Analysis and Design of Feedback Operational Amplifier for Undergraduate Studies in Electrical Engineering

The analog electronics is a challenging subject for undergraduate students in electrical engineering, due to the complex combination of many previous subjects, such as linear circuit analysis, signal and system, linear control theory and some sort of mathematics. This paper presents the modeling, analysis and design of the operational amplifier, which is used as benchmark system for analog electronics, for undergraduate studies in electrical engineering. Followed by the introduction of the operation amplifier circuit, the design of feedback network for the operational amplifier using MATLAB is presented. The bandwidth and sensitivity analysis for the feedback control loop are also discussed. In order to enhance the stability margin and dynamic characteristics of the operational amplifier, the lead compensator is designed for the feedback loop by adding capacitive component to the feedback resistive network. The presented analysis and design method of the operational amplifier by using MATLAB/SIMULINK can be highly effective to compliment the classroom teaching for circuit design courses for undergraduate studies in electrical engineering. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/telkomnika.v10i8.1609 Full Text: PDF

Using Tablet PCs and Interactive Software in IC Design Courses to Improve Learning

This paper describes an initial study of using tablet PCs and interactive course software in integrated circuit (IC) design courses. A rapidly growing community is demonstrating how this technology can improve learning and retention of material by facilitating interaction between faculty and students via cognitive exercises during lectures. While numerous examples of using this technology exist, there is not much literature regarding its application to electrical engineering and IC design in particular. This paper presents examples from three different IC design courses to describe the types of cognitive activities that can be facilitated with this technology. While these examples are specific to IC design, the basic techniques are valid for any application. This study does show some initial success, which, it is hoped, will spark interest at other universities and lead to a better examination of its effectiveness through larger sample sizes.

Growing SPICE

When I was an undergraduate I wanted very much to learn electronic circuit design, but I couldn't. The instructors of the required electronic circuit design courses I was compelled to take seemed to be showing off, and on that basis I certainly didn't choose their follow-on elective courses. Everything in graduate school was elective, and not wishing to jeopardize my grade-point average I merely audited the electronic circuit design courses. Again, I came away with the impression that the instructors were highly competent magicians. They knew razzle-dazzle circuit simplifications that eased analysis and supported design, but I was unable to learn them. Most of the other courses I took didn't seem like that to me, so I had plenty of options other than electronic circuit design.

A Novel Analog Integrated Circuit Design Course Covering Design, Layout, and Resulting Chip Measurement

This work describes a novel, first-year graduate-level analog integrated circuit (IC) design course. The course teaches students analog circuit design; an external manufacturer then produces their designs in three different silicon chips. The students, working in pairs, then test these chips to verify their success. All work is completed within one semester, and the grading cycle in the most recent offering of the course extended from September 2007 to February 2008, when there were 10 students enrolled. The manufacturer's shuttle cycle is 3.5 months. Most students in the course have only a college-level electronics background. The manufacturing process is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 0.35 ¿m CMOS Mixed-Signal 2P4M Polycide 3.3/5 V. The three successful chips consist of a voltage controlled oscillator, a high-performance differential amplifier, and a temperature-independent voltage reference generator. Section VI describes assessment and student feedback as well as proposed course improvement.

Is Your Laboratory a Turn-Off?

Generations of students have discovered, too often, that laboratory experience is the least satisfactory aspect of reading engineering. It is a regular comment from employers of engineering graduates that new employees are deficient in basic laboratory skills, yet the problem persists and unquestionably leaves serious expositors of the subject with a feeling that more should be done in this area. Some three years ago the authors decided a serious effort was needed to address these issues in our own department. The vehicle chosen was the Level 1 circuit design course. This paper will describe the strategy adopted to overcome the perceived weaknesses of our previous laboratory course as measured by a quality audit of student reactions.

Including the effects of component tolerances in the teaching of courses in introductory circuit design

With the emphasis upon design in electrical and electronics curriculums, the need for coverage in circuit design courses on how manufacturer's tolerances on resistors and capacitors will affect the circuit's response is obvious. This paper develops an analytical procedure useful for the determination of these tolerances that is suitable for use in introductory classes in active and passive circuit analysis and design. The procedure allows the determination of the proper manufacturer's tolerances on the passive components such that a given tolerance on a design parameter will not be exceeded.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Integrated circuit teaching through top-down design

This paper describes the organization, development, and results of an integrated circuit design course where the bottom-up teaching approach adopted in textbooks has been managed in conjunction with the top-down strategy of modern design methodologies. The deliverables and milestones established for the teaching, learning, and design activities have been successfully met up to the level of obtaining simulation results demonstrating the functional and/or electrical performance of a number of application specific integrated circuits for communication systems which not only exhibit some innovative solutions but also demonstrate potential practical applicability in industry.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Undergraduate Instruction in Bipolar Integrated Circuit Design and Fabrication Using "Masterslice" Integrated Circuits

Few undergraduate students have the opportunity for actual laboratory experience fabricating solid-state devices. In this paper we describe the integrated circuit fabrication technique used in our undergraduate integrated electronic circuit design course which allows students to not only learn the theory of integrated circuit design but to actually implement their own designs as integrated circuits; all in a one-quarter three-credit course. Thus, valuable industrially relevant experience is obtained by these undergraduate students at a reasonably low cost to the department.