EE 614 — SOLID STATE MICROWAVE DEVICES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS

Academic Semester / Year: Spring 2017

Instructor: Prof. Girish Kumar

Motivation:

The aim of the course is to help students learn to design active and passive circuits in the high frequency regime. As the operation frequency of a circuit increases lumped electrical elements like resistances, capacitances and other classical electrical components starts to behave out of convention due to the appreciable and unwanted inductance and capacitance values present in those electrical components at high frequency. This course helps us to design electrical circuits like the power divider, frequency mixers, phase shifters and power attenuators in the high frequency regime using microstrip transmission lines instead of the classical lumped elements.

Course Content

1) Basics of Transmission Lines: Strip Line, Coaxial Cable, Microstrip Line Design.

2) Coplanar Waveguides, Lossy Transmission Line Model, Impedance Matching using Smith Chart

3) ABCD and S parameters for various circuits

4) Power Dividers and Combiners

5) Microwave Couplers

6) Microwave Filter Design

7) Microwave Attenuators

8) Design of Low Noise Amplifiers

9) Microwave Mixers and Oscillators

Prerequisites:

This course has no prerequisites but it is highly recommended to do a basic EM waves course before taking up this course as it is highly dependent on concepts like transmission line and smith chart.

Feedback on lectures:

All the lectures were based on slides. The pace of the lectures were slow and the professor gave ample time to learn the concepts. The professor does not focus on derivation of formulas but underscores the importance of the application of those formulas. He also intermittently gives us advice on practical considerations while choosing components or designing circuits as well as choosing what and when from the industrial standards. The lectures slides are concise and adequate for the examinations but one needs to attend the lectures in order to understand the nuances of microwave circuit design.

Evaluation:

1) Two Quizzes – 10% (Best out of the 2 quizzes)

2) Assignment – 10%

3) Design Project/ Term Paper – 20%

4) Mid semester Examination – 20%

5) End Semester Examination – 40%

Feedback on Exams and Assignments:

There were four assignments and for each of the assignment one week was given to solve and submit them. The difficulty level of the assignments were easy as examples of some of the questions could be easily found in the lecture slides. The assignments and exams heavily evaluated the students on designing of circuits given the parameters. Some practical and educated guesses had to be made for unknown parameters in order to complete the design. The design steps were well documented in the lecture slides. The exam focused on the application of the formulas given in the class through extensive numerical problems as well as design problems. The end semester examination always has a question on the presentations of the design project/term paper made by the students.

Feedback on Design Project/ Term Paper:

The students had to make a group of two or three and choose between a design project and term paper. The term paper included reading and understanding a research paper and simulate the results given in the paper. The group could be adventurous and deliver an innovative idea which is derivative or complementary to the paper. The group which chooses design project must choose from a list of electrical circuits given by the professor and design them with the given specifications. This includes simulating the design and then fabricating the design on a substrate. The design project helps the students to learn the practical difficulties which entails while designing a microwave circuit. The professor expected the students to come in formal attire during the presentation of their projects.

Difficulty level:

Overall the course is on the easy level. Examinations and assignments are strongly derived from the lecture slides and focuses on numerical applications of formulas as well as design problems. Grading was also lenient but difficult in the case of AA.

Attendance:

A minimum attendance policy was withheld by the professor in order to pass the course.

Reference Books:

1) D.M. Pozar , Microwave Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

2) B. Bhat and S.K. Koul, Stripline Like Transmission Structures, John Wiley & Sons, 1989

3) I. J. Bahl and P. Bhartia, Microwave Solid State Circuit Design, John Wiley & Sons, 2003

Lecture slides were adequate but I personally followed the first book which contained almost all the designs taught by the professor.

Reviewed by: Pratik Brahma (pratikbrahma96@gmail.com)