EE614: Solid State Microwave Devices and its Applications

Course Offered in: 2016 – 2017 (Spring)

Course Instructor: Prof. Girish Kumar

Motivation for this course

This course deals with the theory and applications of microwave frequency band of electromagnetic spectrum. One will get to know the working and development of Power Combiner /Divider, Coupler, Filters, Attenuators, Amplifier, Oscillators, Mixers, RF Switches, Phase Shifters and much more. It’s a highly practical course with lots of applications from daily life. There is also hands-on component for interested students.

Pre-requisites

This course doesn’t require any hard and fast pre-requisites but EE301 knowledge is helpful for understanding the course content better.

Course Content:

Amplifiers   –  Microwave semiconductor devices  and  models; Power  gain  equations,   stability, impedance  matching,  constant   gain  and noise  figure  circles;   Small  signal, low noise, high-power and broadband amplifier designs.;
Oscillators  – One port, two port, YIG  dielectric and  Gunn-diode oscillators.;Two terminal microwave devices and circuits:;
PIN diodes and uses as switches, phase shifters and limiters;Varactor  diodes,  IMPATT and  TRAPATT  devices,  transferred electron  devices.
Microwave BJTs. GaAs FETs, low  noise  and power  GaAs   FETs  and  their  applications.
Microwave Mixers.

Feedback on Lectures:

Lectures were good but filled with professors random jokes. They were conducted with aid of slides which were provided to students. It was important to attend lectures as lot of questions in exams were directly based on class discussions (not covered in slides).

Assignments and Tutorials:

There were no assignments but practice problems were provided (not to be submitted back). Tutorials were conducted to discuss the practice problems.

Exams:

Exams comprised of 2 quizzes (10% each), midsem(20%), endsem(40%) and course project (20%). Exams were mostly based on class discussions and practice problems.

Difficulty

Easy

Grading – It was average

Study Material and References Lecture slides which were shared by instructors. No specific books were suggested.

Reviewed by: Dheeraj kotagiri dheerajkotu@gmail.com