This course is designed to provide students with fundamental knowledge of microwave and millimetre-wave components and to develop the skills necessary for circuit design. This foundation is extended to integrate such components into more complex system such as TX/TR in modern communications and imaging systems taking into considerations of techniques required and technology involved.

Weekly

Friday 9am - 1pm

Weekly lab sessions 2 hours each where the student get familiar with MWO and use MWO to investigate what are the parameters affecting the design of transmission lines e.g. microstrip lines and coplanar waveguides commonly used for microwave and millimetre-wave integrated circuits; Design of typical passive components e.g. resonators, filters, and power combiners/splitter using planar technologies; Design low noise amplifier (LNA) using MWO operating at microwave frequencies.

None.

None.

75% Written exam

25% laboratory exercises

The aims of the course are: to provide students with fundamental knowledge about microwave and millimeter-wave components and basic circuits; to develop the necessary skills to design microwave and millmeter-wave circuits adhering to specification; to introduce and apply the concepts necessary to integrate such circuits into more complex systems such as TX/TR in modern communications and imaging systems;  to foster students' ability to choose the appropriate techniques/methods for circuit design depending on the technology involved.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ Design and analyse millimetre-wave and microwave planar transmission lines (microstrip and CPW) and use them for circuit matching using appropriate techniques depending on the technology involved. 

■ Design and analyse RF behaviour of passive elements such as filters, resonators, couplers and splitters using lumped and distributed element models

■ Design and analyse active devices such as amplifiers, oscillators and low noise receivers using small-signal method

■ Evaluate the most commonly used measurements techniques for application in microwave and millimetre-wave integrated circuits technology.

Requirements for the award of credits

To ensure that a student will be awarded the credits for a course, he or she must complete the course and reach a minimum level of attainment. This requires that a student:

■ be present at lectures, laboratories and tutorials on at least 50% of occasions at which attendance is monitored,

■ satisfactorily complete the assignments in the laboratories,

■ attend the class test (if held) and gain a nonzero mark and

■ attend the degree examination and gain a nonzero mark

Note that these are minimum requirements: good students will achieve far higher partici-pa-tion rates. Any student who misses an assessment or a significant number of classes because of illness or other good cause should report this by completing a Websurf absence report.