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ECEN 4610 - Capstone Laboratory

Required - 3 credit hours
On-Line Course Materials

Catalog Description: ECEN4610 provides hands-on laboratory experience for teams of 3-5 members in the systematic proposal, design, build, integration, test, and documentation of an electronic/computer based system. The result will be a reliably operating, stand-alone analog/digital system, with publication-quality technical documentation. The project topic may be selected from one or more ECE focus areas such as Bioengineering, Communications and Signal Processing, Computer Engineering, Control Systems, Electromagnetics, Optoelectronics, Power Electronics, Solid State Materials and Devices. Whenever possible, students interested in taking the lab should form teams, discuss their project topic ideas with the lab instructors and other ECE faculty and come up with a project topic before the semester starts. The completed project will be demonstrated in a lab "open house" at the end of the semester.

Textbook: Class notes; technical manuals for systems; no required text.

Prerequisites:

Course objectives: To teach students at senior level all aspects of a project, from design to documentation, working in a team environment. The course utilizes and applies the skills and knowledge students have gained throughout their prior undergraduate curriculum.

Topics:

  1. Introduction to laboratory equipment and specific microcomputer components (development station hardware, development station software, Unix software, auxiliary test gear, Xilinx and EPLD technology). Introduction to interface construction and system integration (use of wire-wrap boards, use of test equipment to check out simple designs, use of debugging software).
  2. Laboratory Projects: Special projects. The group selects a system that it wishes to design. After obtaining approval from the instructor, the group designs, builds, and documents the system.
Class schedule: 4 hours laboratory meeting time per week; additional hours required outside formally scheduled hours.

Contribution of course to meeting the professional component: Contributes 3 semester hours to criterion 4(b) “one and one-half years of engineering topics, consisting of engineering sciences and engineering design appropriate to the student's field of study.”

Relationship of course to program outcomes:
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H H H H H H H H M H H

Prepared by: Tom Brown, V. Heuring
May 16, 2005