Electronic Engineering (Including Foundation Year) - BEng (Hons)

University of Essex

Our Team Project Challenge gives you the opportunity to develop a range of professional skills by working as part of a small student team on a specific project. The projects are research-based and incorporate the concepts of specifications, design, and implementation. You’ll learn about sustainability, project and time management, design, legal issues, health and safety, data analysis and presentation, team reporting, and self-evaluation. You’ll also develop skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, agility, leadership, collaboration across networks, and effective oral and written communication, as well as curiosity and imagination, all of which will enhance your knowledge, confidence and social skills necessary to innovate and succeed in a competitive global environment.

You’ll be introduced to some key elements of mathematics that are essential to engineering. You'll develop your understanding through working on examples in class, and through practical laboratory-based exercises using the programming tool, MATLAB.

This module will provide you with an introduction to fundamental concepts of computer programming in the C language, which is particularly relevant to programming embedded systems and for electronic engineers.

Following Mathematics for Engineers I, you will continue to develop key mathematical skills required to address real-world problems in engineering. You will be introduced to the operation of integration, integral transforms, differential equations and functions of multiple variables, and implement these concepts in MATLAB to solve practical problems.

Computers, embedded systems, and digital systems in general have become an essential part of most people's lives, whether directly or indirectly. The aim of this module is to introduce the software and hardware underpinnings of such systems at an introductory yet challenging level suitable for future computer scientists and engineers. Topics covered in the module include both top-view as well as bottom-view approaches to understanding digital computers. They range from the more theoretical (e.g., state machines, logic circuits, and von Neumann's architecture) to the more practical (e.g., how transistors produce binary signals, operating system functions, memory management, and common hardware devices). The module also includes problem solving classes in which a guided discussion of weekly exercises is aimed at giving the student an opportunity to consolidate his/her understanding of the topics involved. Upon completion of this module, students should have a good conceptual and practical understanding of the nature and architecture of digital computer systems and their components.

This module develops the fundamental concepts introduced in the Digital Systems Architecture. We examine how data are represented within digital systems, including floating point, 'text' and 'data' files, and how the conversions between internal and human-readable forms are performed. The design and applications of higher-level logic elements such as counters, registers and multiplexers are discussed, as well as the more general concept of the finite state machine and its design. Transmission of digital data between systems is introduced by examination of the RS232 protocol. Further, fundamental decisions on how such sources should be represented in digital format include sample rates and quantization accuracy are discussed. In the case of audio and video especially, the possibilities for signal processing and data compression are investigated

This module is one of two concerned with scientific and engineering foundations on which electronics is based. All electronics components are based on physical principles that relate voltage, current flow and the storage or loss of energy. All the theory we need to learn about how circuits behave is based on the fact that electric charge cannot be created or destroyed, and that the energy of each electron just depends on where it is, and how fast it is moving. How charges move in materials depends on their crystal structures. From basic ideas, the main principles of electronics are built up so that they can be used in the wider study of electronics to solve problems.

This module comprises the second half of our 1st year series on fundamentals of electronics. The module focuses on reactive circuits (i.e., circuits with capacitors and/or inductors), basic semiconductors (i.e., diodes and bipolar junction transistors), electromotive devices, and operational amplifiers. The overview of these devices includes more theoretical concepts (such as Faraday's and Lenz’s laws) as well as more practical topics such as their transient and steady state responses to step and sinusoidal inputs, using phasors for circuit analysis, applications in analogue filters, amplification with feedback, power supply units, and DC motors and generators. The module includes weekly problem solving classes in which calculation exercises are discussed and four weekly lab sessions in which more theoretical concepts are applied to implementation and testing of a DC power supply unit.

This course covers the principles of project management, team working, communication, legal issues, finance, and company organisation. Working in small teams, students will go through the full project life-cycle of design, development and implementation, for a bespoke software requirement. In this course, students gain vital experience to enable them to enter the computer science/Electrical engineering workforce, with a degree backed by the British Computer Society, and by the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Need to build on your mathematical knowledge? Want to apply mathematical skills to engineering? Study the fundamental mathematics for engineering, covering topics like integral transform theory, probability theory, and numerical integration. Gain experience of using Matlab software to understand and solve problems.

This module aims to develop an in-depth understanding of analogue systems and circuit techniques from the perspective of the design process. The module incorporates two major themes: The first is the circuit-orientated theme aiming to engender both an intuitive understanding of simple circuit design and functionality. The second theme focuses on the more formal analysis and computer simulation techniques using equivalent circuit transistor models where key skills in numeracy and circuit simulation are developed and then used in the design, simulation and construction of oscillator circuits. The module is supported by laboratory-based assignments that investigate small signal amplifiers, and voltage-controlled oscillator design and applications.

Digital systems are an important part of most electronic devices and systems. In this module students learn to design a small system using an industry-standard prototyping board based around a Xilinx FPGA. The module is laboratory based using Xilinx Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software and it builds on knowledge of digital circuits that students learn in CE161. Students learn how to design, and more importantly, how to debug and test a design, using laboratory test equipment, to convert an idea into working hardware.

Many modern electronic devices are high speed and are widely used in computers, communications, radars and various other electronic systems. This module deals with those aspects of electromagnetic necessary for fine engineering of high speed circuits, devices, antennas and systems and for interference mitigation.

The overall goal of this module is to provide you with an understanding of how programs are written in C (a computer programming language) to solve engineering problems. Learn how to program an embedded microprocessor in C and how to design embedded microprocessor systems as solutions to various problems. Explore the design input and output modules for an embedded system.

This module provides you with a basic understanding of the analysis of linear systems and introduces you to filter design techniques for analogue signal processing. The Laplace transform and its application in circuit and system theory are introduced, together with the concepts of system transfer function and impulse response, and techniques for deriving the transfer function of a circuit. The steady-state response of systems to sinusoidal inputs is presented. Bode plotting techniques are covered, and the effects of feedback are investigated, and techniques for ensuring stability are discussed. Butterworth and Chebyshev filter approximations are introduced. After covering the concepts of frequency and impedance transformations, selected standard analysis and design techniques applied to low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and band-stop filters of both passive and active types are examined.

The highlight of our undergraduate degree courses is the individual capstone project. This project module provides students with the opportunity to bring together all the skills they have gained during their degree and demonstrate that they can develop a product from the starting point of a single 1/2 page description, provided either by an academic member of staff or an external company. In all the student spends 450 hours throughout the academic year, reporting to their academic tutor, and in the case of company projects, to a company mentor. All projects are demonstrated to external companies on our Project Open Day.

Embedded systems have become more pervasive and powerful to take on truly sophisticated functions in recent years. When facing with the rapid technical updating and complicated market requirements, the designers have to use advanced design techniques to deal with the complexity. In this module, you will gain the experience of full embedded system design process, and the fundamental knowledge on hardware components and real time programming. The hand-on practice helps your understanding of embedded system design process.

Digital systems are in virtually all devices we interact with: from consumer electronics, to biomedical applications and automotive industry. Digital technology is evolving so rapidly that engineers need rapid-prototyping software and hardware tools that allow them to explore and test an implementation before moving to the production. In this module, learners will gain fundamental circuit design and verification skills by using an industry-standard hardware description language (VHDL) to program field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The learning process is experience-oriented so that hands-on practice in designing embedded systems as well as theoretical background is acquired during the course.