EE 301 - ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES

Course offered in:

Autumn 2018 - 2019

Instructor:

Prof. Jayanta Mukherjee

Motivation for this course:

This course aims to provide you with basic understanding of Maxwell’s equation, electromagnetic waves and various phenomena arising from it such as radiation. After this course you’ll be able answer questions such as why a printed circuit board which performs normally on a low frequency fails when operated at a higher frequency and how does an antenna work.

Prerequisites:

There are no hard pre-requesites but a good understanding of PH108 and MA105 would help considerably.

Course Content:

  1. Transmission line equations and Smith Chart.
  2. Maxwell’s Equations.
  3. Uniform Plane Waves
  4. Plane Waves at Media Interface
  5. Waveguides
  6. Antennas

Lectures:

For every 3 hours of lectures taken by the professor, there was a 1.5 hour tutorial taken by the TAs. The lectures were straightforward to follow although the physics was glossed over at many points. There were no slides, but the professors hand written notes would be put up which were helpful. The syllabus to be covered is vast and therefore it helps to attend the lectures and tutorials and keep a track of the material and questions being solved.

Tutorials:

The tutorials were taken by the TAs and were essential in understanding the material covered. The solutions provided to each tutorial were helpful.

Exams:

Quiz 1 (10%) – This was simple and involved one line answers to some basic concepts regarding Maxwell’s Laws. Midsem (30%) – This was slightly on the tougher side, with some questions being quite different form the tutorial and some being ambiguous. Quiz 2 (10%) – This was similar to Quiz 1. Endsem (50%) – This involved traditional problem solving, although the questions were not too difficult, the grading and marking scheme was strict. (Unless you are a crib god :p) .

Grading:

The grading was better than expected.

Books:

There was no fixed book for the course although these books proved to be helpful in understanding the material. Electromagnetic Waves by R.K. Shevgaonkar ( You could try the lecture series on YouTube) Engineering Electromagnetics by William Hayt Microwave Engineering by David Pozar