Basic Information
- Course Code: EE781
- Course Name: Integrated Circuit Design for Sensor System
- Course Offered In: Autumn 2022
- Instructors: Laxmeesha Somappa
- Prerequisites: A good understanding of EE204 and EE618 (it was not a hard prereq, but it helped a lot). Sir will discuss the exact prerequisites in 1st lecture, so make sure you attend it if you are unsure.
- Difficulty (on a scale of 5): 3
Course Content
The course starts with some brush-up of signal processing and then discusses requirements for circuits to interface with sensors, characterizing those requirements. Then it builds on discussing integrated circuit techniques used to design circuits that match those requirements. Mainly you will study about Auto-Zeroing amplifiers, Chopping amplifiers and use both of these to create a capacitively coupled instrumentation amplifier. These are the broad categories. In each category, sir discuss the architectures used and the disadvantages and then builds up on how to remove those disadvantages. In the end of the course, when you have a fair understanding of the material, Sir will discuss research papers where you can see the things taught in the lectures, and how researchers use those techniques to implement amplifiers for different sensor applications.
Feedback on Lectures
The lectures are very interesting and interactive, sir pose questions to the students and discuss them. The questions are recursive, so it makes you think to the core as to why you are doing something. Professor explains the concepts very well and is happy to repeat them if someone doesn’t understand or if feels the feedback from the class is not satisfactory. Although sir shares the proper lecture notes, it is advisable to create your own notes.
Feedback on Evaluations
The overall approximate weightage split is as follows:
- 3 Assignment - 20%
- Course Project - 40%
- Mid-Sem - 15%
- End-Sem - 25%
In the first lecture, sir will share the course plan for when he plans to release the assignments and when the submission will be so that you are informed beforehand. The course is heavily assignment based requires you to spend time on it as assignments eventually build up to the course project, so starting them as soon as they are released is advisable. The course project was in a group of two, and sir will tell you about the expectations from the course project compared to an assignment. He takes viva of the course project after the submission.
Exams are open notes with sir allowing printouts of the notes he shares. Lecture notes and discussions are more than sufficient for the exams.
The course is not hard but requires a lot of time investment with assignments and project. However, if you attend lectures, it would be easy to do those assignments as sir usually discuss the assignments in the class and give hints and methods to go about it. And the examinations are based on what is discussed in class, so attending the lectures make the course easy otherwise, it would be difficult.
Follow-up Courses
None
Final Takeaway
This is a very good course for people interested in analog design. The topics discussed in the course are used in industry and research a lot. How exactly the Op-amps and industrial amplifiers are created, focusing on interfacing the sensors.