Syllabus

I. Introduction

II. DC Circuit review

• Kirchoff's laws
• Thevinen's Theorem
• Voltage dividers

III. AC circuits

• Review of capacitors and inductors
• Phasors
• Complex impedances
• Filter design
  • Short cut analysis
  • Loading effects

IV. Diodes

• Ideal diodes
• The physics of semiconductor diodes
  • IV (current-voltage) characteristics of PN junctions
  • Turn-on voltage
  • Reverse saturation current
  • Zener breakdown

V. Power supplies, unregulated

VI. Transistors

• Physics of transistor operation
• Negative feedback design principals
• Emitter follower
• Common emitter
• Common base
• Push-pull amplifiers
• Average power dissipation
• Crossover distortion and remedies
• Differential amplifiers
• Effective emitter resistance
• Other discrete devices:
  • SCR
  • Triac
  • Photodiode
  • Photoresistor
  • JFETS
  • IGFETS
  • Analog switches, multiplexors.

VII. Power supplies, regulated

• Series regulated
• Shunt regulated
• Integrated circuit regulators
• Crowbar circuits

VIII. Operational amplifiers

• Review of principals
• Description of simple circuits
• Arithmetic operations: add, subtract, multiply, divide

IX. Digital electronics, introduction

• Logic
• Boolean algebra
• TTL
• CMOS
• Simple gates: AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR

X. Flip-flops

• RS
• JK
• Counter circuits
  • Ripple
  • Synchronous

XI. Microprocessors and computer architecture

• CPU/memory communication
  • Address bus
  • Data bus
  • Control bus
• Memory-mapped input/output
  • Output ports
  • Input ports
• Microcontrollers

XII. Conversion between digital and analog signals

• Digital-to-Analog converters
  • Simple summing amplifier
  • R-2R ladder
  • 1-bit DACs
• Analog-to-Digital converters
  • Successive approximation
  • Ramp integrators
  • Flash
  • Understanding ADC and DAC specifications
  • Commercial data acquisition cards
• Phase-locked loops
  • FM demodulators
  • Frequency synthesizers
• Direct digital synthesis

XIII. Standard computer interface buses

• See Standard computer and instrument buses for details

XIV. Data acquisition

• Speed trade-offs
• Noise -- extrinsic and intrinsic
• Averaging techniques
  • Signal Averagers
  • Box-car averagers
  • Lock-in amplifiers
• Aliasing

XV. Data analysis

• Linear and non-linear curve fitting
• The Fast Fourier Transform

XVI. Electrical wiring

Physics 230

Rick Matthews

Department of Physics

Wake Forest University