Electronics and Computer Engineering MEng

Core modules:

Digital System Engineering

This module introduces the basic principles underlying the design of electronic systems. The ideas are discussed mainly in the context of digital design which cannot be undertaken realistically without some level of system thinking and planning. Other areas of system design will be used to illustrate and reinforce the idea that system design ideas apply to many fields beside digital design. The module will also introduce some of the computer based tools used by system designers for simulation and verification.

20 credits

Electrical Circuits and Networks

This module introduces the basic principles underlying electric circuits. The idea of a circuit, and the concepts of voltage, current and power are introduced for both alternating and direct sources. The interaction between electrical circuits and magnetic circuits is discussed and the idea of mutual coupling and transformers is introduced. Formal analysis methods such as nodal, loop and superposition are introduced in the context of dc and ac circuits and the complex notation for ac quantities applied to the latter. The calculation of power in a range of contexts is discussed extensively.

20 credits

Electronic Devices and Circuits

This module introduces the physical principles that govern the properties and applications of the active and passive circuit components that comprise all electronic and electrical circuits. Issues affecting the practical behaviour of resistors, capacitors and especially diodes and transistors are discussed. The circuit environments in which diodes and transistors are used, and the models describing their internal behaviour and external interactions, are introduced. It is shown how transistors and diodes can be used in both switching circuits and amplifier circuits and the important concept of small signal modelling is introduced in the context of the latter.

20 credits

Mathematics (Electrical and Aerospace)

This module aims to reinforce students' previous knowledge and to develop new basic mathematical techniques needed to support the engineering subjects taken at Levels 1 and 2. It also provides a foundation for the Level 2 mathematics courses in the appropriate engineering department. The module is delivered via online lectures, reinforced with weekly interactive problem classes..

20 credits

Algorithms and Data Structures

This module introduces the basic building blocks of non-trivial computational processes by providing the knowledge required to select and implement appropriate data structures and algorithms. The understanding of the limits of computation for a given problem is developed using a range of examples. The module will be delivered using a range of lectures and practical sessions to help students develop the module outcomes.

10 credits

General Skills

This is a general skills module which encompasses a range of professional development activities that will be useful throughout the remainder of your degree and career. These include practical skills in the laboratory, simulation skills for analysing circuits, communication skills and career development.

You will learn to use the full range of industry standard laboratory equipment such as oscilloscopes, waveform generators and soldering workstations. A series of engaging exercises, both in the lab and using advanced simulation tools, are designed to build up your proficiency in practical engineering. You will use measurements to determine the mystery components in hidden boxes, practice soldering and fault-finding on printed circuit boards, and combine programming with circuits using microcontrollers to solve real world challenges. Many activities have short written tasks aligned to them, allowing focused practice at technical communications with rapid feedback from staff.

In the personal tutorials programme, you will work through personal development activities in small groups, such as effective CV writing and communication skills. You will receive regular feedback on your personal development through skills audits aligned to the Sheffield Graduate Attributes. Some activities will be individual, such as researching your own employability strategy to get your dream engineering job, while others will be in teams, such as giving peer feedback on presentations and an exciting team-based robotics challenge.

The module culminates in an independent construction project that will require all of your skills together - past projects have included creating audio speaker circuits (handling digital input signals right through to audible sound outputs) and infra-red remote controls.

The combination of the two strands to the module will prepare you to work as a professional engineer throughout your degree programme and beyond.

10 credits

Programming

This unit deals with practical programming. Students will study and practise programming in C andMatlab to provide underpinning skills for their development as engineers.

10 credits

System Design Analysis

This module gives you a hands-on appreciation of the design, manufacture and operation of electrical and electronic products. Delivery will consist of lectures and laboratory classes.There will be two types of laboratories:  (a) Deconstruction  (b) ConstructionIn (a) you will be guided through the deconstruction of defunct commonplace electrical products. You will discover how the products are made; how the various sub-components interact and the materials that have been used.In (b) you will build some simple electrical/electronic systems. This may include the use of simple circuit simulation tools and a take-home kit.The lectures will be used to facilitate the labs and will also include discussions of the issues associated with recycling and sustainability.

10 credits

Global Engineering Challenge Week

The Faculty-wide Global Engineering Challenge Week is a compulsory part of the first-year programme. The project has been designed to develop student academic, transferable and employability skills as well as widen their horizons as global citizens. Working in multi-disciplinary groups of 5-6, for a full week, all students in the Faculty choose from a number of projects arranged under a range of themes including Water, Waste Management, Energy and Digital with scenarios set in an overseas location facing economic challenge. Some projects are based on the Engineers Without Borders Engineering for people design challenge*.

*The EWB challenge provides students with the opportunity to learn about design, teamwork and communication through real, inspiring, sustainable and cross-cultural development projects identified by EWB with its community-based partner organisations.

Core modules:

Analogue and Digital Electronics

This module brings together the underlying physical principles of BJT, JFET and MOSFET devices to show how structural decisions in device design affect performance as a circuit element. Basic circuit topologies such as long - tailed pairs, Darlington transistors and current mirrors are described as a precursor to exploring the internal design of a typical op-amp. Common applications of op-amps are discussed. The relationship between device structure and performance in simple CMOS circuits is explored and applied to real digital circuit applications. Digital system design strategies are introduced with examples drawn from everyday embedded digital systems.

20 credits

Communication Electronics

This module introduces the basic structure of a communication system and examines the various circuits and signal engineering strategies that are necessary to make a system work. The fundamental building blocks of a communications system are introduced and analysed in terms of the critical design metrics. Following on from the system approach, a range of circuit components are introduced and analysed such as filters and oscillators. This approach will provide you with a range of levels of system and component understanding such that you can apply these to designs.

20 credits

Software Engineering

This module sets out the process of software engineering and allows students to develop effective and efficient strategies for the realisation of large scale software systems system. Fundamentals of object oriented programming will also be addressed in the context of software engineering to solve a computational problem.

20 credits

Design Project

You will undertake an extended design project that will encompass modelling, design, implementation and test. The list of available projects may vary from year-to-year, but will always encompass a range of topics from different aspects of electronic and electrical engineering.

10 credits

Engineering Software Design

This module builds on the C programming learned in year 1 by exploring both the higher level issues of programming, modelling, and skills that an Electronic Engineer should possess. Three mini projects using C and MATLAB and drawn from across the department. The aim is to develop in you the habits of object orientation (e.g. modularity, data hiding, etc.) using C and MATLAB, both commonly used industry standard tools, and writing software for embedded systems.

10 credits

HDL-Based Design & Programmable Logic

Provide a comprehensive overview of Hardware Description Languages focusing on the modelling, simulation and synthesis of digital logic circuits. Continue through to the extension of HDLs for system design and verification of System on Chip (SOC) designs. Provide an overview of target technologies, in particular programmable logic and FPGA. Emphasis will be on Verilog as commercial processor cores (ARM, MIPS) are only available in Verilog. Comparisons with VHDL will be made at all stages.

10 credits

Industrial Project

This module combines a lecture series and an industrially inspired group project task under the SHIPS banner, SHIPS standing for SHeffield Industrial Projects Scheme. The group industrial project aims to allow you to develop skills in such areas as engineering problem solving, effective communication (both oral and written) and group project management; all by tackling a complex technical problem with difficult realistic constraints within a restricted timescale.

10 credits

Managing Engineering Projects and Teams

This module provides you with an understanding of the significance of projects as an instrument of business success in engineering organisations. You will learn a range of project management tools, techniques and methodologies throughout the project life cycle. You will develop skills in defining, planning, delivering, and controlling engineering projects. You will also learn the roles and responsibilities of people within engineering projects and understand how to manage teams in engineering projects.

10 credits

Mathematics II (Electrical)

This module is part of a series of Level Two modules designed for the particular group of engineers shown in brackets in the module title. Each module consolidates previous mathematical knowledge and develops new mathematical techniques relevant to the particular engineering discipline.

10 credits

Engineering - You're Hired

The Faculty-wide Engineering - You're Hired Week is a compulsory part of the second year programme, and the week has been designed to develop student academic, transferable and employability skills. Working in multi-disciplinary groups of about six, students will work in interdisciplinary teams on a real world problem over an intensive week-long project. The projects are based on problems provided by industrial partners, and students will come up with ideas to solve them and proposals for a project to develop these ideas further.

Core modules:

Individual Investigative Project

To provide a structured individual design project to enable you to carry out practical and/or theoretical work which underpins your academic studies and allows for the acquisition and demonstration of a wide range of practical skills applied to engineering designs.

40 credits

Digital Engineering

This module provides an introduction to digital processor organisation, architecture, instruction set architectures and system organisation/design. It also provides elements on the underlying computer arithmetic and approaches to design (including Verilog Hardware Description Language). The module is underpinned by practical examples. The module then considers an important application area, looking at the fundamental concepts, underlying mathematics, design methodologies and techniques.

20 credits

Electronics and Devices

This module aims to describe the generic circuit elements, analogue and digital and their associated properties which are typically used within IC circuits. Additionally, this module aims to bring you a level of understanding of VLSI design, such that you can design basic circuits.

Having considered integrated electronics at a circuit level, this module will then look at the fundamental properties of semiconductor materials and devices. It will introduce properties of semiconductor materials such as Si, GaAs and GaN. The semiconductor material properties will be used to design a range of devices including solar cell, photodetector, LEDs, Lasers and microwave devices. Heterojunctions and nanostructures (such as quantum wells) will be introduced to improve semiconductor device performance. The module also aims to provide the knowledge to exploit semiconductor properties, material selection and approaches in device designs.

20 credits

Feedback Systems Design

The module provides an introduction to the modelling, analysis and design of feedback control systems using classical control theory. The focus is linear time-invariant (LTI) systems in the continuous-time domain, although a brief introduction is also provided to digital controllers.

10 credits

Accounting and Law for Engineers

The module is designed to introduce engineering students to key areas of accounting and legal risk that engineers should be aware of in their working environment. The module will draw directly on practical issues of budgeting, assessing financial risks and making financial decisions in the context of engineering projects and/or product development. At the same time, the module will develop students' understanding of the legal aspects of entering into contracts for the development and delivery of engineering projects and products, and enhance their awareness of environmental regulation, liability for negligence, intellectual property rights and the importance of data protection. Through a series of parallel running lectures in the two disciplines, the module will provide a working knowledge of the two areas and how they impinge on engineering practice.

10 credits

Mathematics III (Electrical)

This module consolidates previous mathematical knowledge and develops new mathematical techniques relevant to electrical engineering at levels 3 and 4.

10 credits

Principles of Communications

This course considers the theory and techniques used by a wide range of communication systems, particularly the more recent digital and cryptographic systems. The aim is for students to develop a good grasp of the structure of a modern communication system and to understand the basic issues at each stage in the system.

10 credits

Core modules:

Group Project

The project, performed under the supervision of either two academic supervisors, or one academic supervisor and one second external marker from an industrial partner, takes the form of a multidisciplinary investigative or design project usually with a significant industrial input. Students are divided into multidisciplinary teams and presened with the project brief by the industrialists involved. Project activities are based in the research labs of the supervisor(s) although students may also have to make use of the facilities, normally within the Department. Students hold regular minuted progress management meetings with group members rotating their group management responsibilities.

45 credits

Advanced Computer Systems

This module looks at modern computer systems from operating systems down to the underlying computer architectures to provide a coherent view of how such systems work and how their performance can be improved, looking, in particular, at parallelism.

15 credits

Advanced Integrated Electronics

This module will advance your understanding of analogue and digital VLSI design. It concentrates on issues such as power consumption, the effect of interconnect, non-CMOS logic, circuit layout, analog amplifiers, data converters, and using Spice.

15 credits

System Design

This module is concerned with the management of complexity in system design. To learn the basics of structured approach to design of complex systems, you will undertake a design project that requires the application of state of the art design tools that help to achieve appropriate error free design structures.

15 credits

Optional modules:

Advanced Signal Processing

This module focuses on introducing advanced signal processing methods and technologies and their applications. Topics include multi-rate filtering and filter banks; signal transforms; random signals; adaptive filtering and array signal processing.

15 credits

Broadband Wireless Techniques

This module will give an understanding of the most up-to-date communication techniques used in the design and operation of broadband wireless systems based on OFDM technology such as WiFi, WiMAX and LTE. The module will explore the physical (PHY) layer, medium access control (MAC) and radio resource management functionalities of broadband wireless systems. It will also include an introduction to broadband wireless systems; the principles of OFDM, OFDMA and TDD/FDD multiple access; bit interleaved convolutional and turbo channel coding/decoding for OFDM systems; adaptive coding and modulation; frequency selective fading, channel estimation and equalisation; MIMO techniques; and network architectures.

15 credits

Data Coding Techniques for Communication and Storage

Processing techniques to enable transmission and storage of data, in a reliable and secure fashion, are a key element in nearly all modern communication systems. This module deals with data-coding techniques required for reliable and secure data transmission and storage. It covers various aspects of digital communication combining elementary communication theory with practical solutions to problems encountered.

15 credits

Data Modelling and Machine Intelligence

All of our lives are affected by machine intelligence and data models - Google is a very visible example. But if you are a victim of identity theft, if you want a loan to buy a house or if you want to pass through immigration at an airport, a model derived from data using some form of machine learning technique will be involved.
Engineers increasingly look to machine intelligence techniques such as neural networks and other machine learning methods to solve problems that are not amenable to conventional analysis e.g. by application of Newton's and Kirchhoff's laws, and other physical principles. Instead they use measurements of system variables to compute a model of the process that can then be used in design, analysis and forecasting. System identification is a specific example of data modelling.
We will look at the underlying principles of machine learning, the advantages and limitations of the various approaches and effective ways of applying them with the aim of making you a competent practitioner.

15 credits

Engineering Commercial Success: And making the world a better place!

Students work in interdisciplinary teams to create solutions to a real problem provided by a real customer. Typically the customer will be a member or members of the community e.g. children with disabilities, terminally ill people, etc. Student teams learn how to solicit needs from user interviews and go on to create (and where possible prototype) solutions that meet functional, commercial and social requirements. Teams pitch their concept and business start up proposals to an invited audience and assessors.

15 credits

Managing Innovation and Change in Engineering Contexts

This module introduces you to the importance of innovation in manufacturing and service organisations whose primary business activity is engineering and/or technology. Innovation management is introduced as the thoughtful combination of new product/process development and change management. Through case studies, theoretical frameworks, and tools you will come to understand innovation at multiple scales: international, national, regional, organisational and team, with particular emphasis on how organisations manage and exploit the commercial risks and opportunities inherent in innovation, and how project teams and engineers can respond to innovation challenges effectively. The module is aimed at engineering students of any discipline.

15 credits

Mobile Networks and Physical Layer Protocols

This module aims to provide an overview of how mobile communications networks operate and descriptions of the radio technology used over the air interface and the physical layer protocols used in GSM, 3G, 4G and 5G mobile networks. More specifically, the syllabus will cover: the description and demonstration of current UK cellular mobile networks with a historical perspective; antenna design for the radio-frequency interface, including handset, vehicle and base station antennas; multiple antenna arrays; health related issues of mobile handsets; radio propagation issues, diversity gain, Rake reception; link budgets; cellular network design and deployment strategies; modulation schemes; and GSM/3G/4G/5G physical layer protocols.

15 credits

Optical Communication Devices and Systems

The course examines the behaviour of the components in a communications system and the way in which their design and individual performance is determined by that of the system requirements.

15 credits

Optimisation: Theory, algorithms and applications

This unit provides detailed presentations on the use of numerical optimisation and search methods for a wide range of engineering problems. Traditional approaches drawn from Operations Research will be enhanced by topics based on recent developments in heuristic methods, such as evolutionary computing, e.g. genetic algorithms and swarm intelligence.

15 credits

Principles of Communications

This course considers the mathematical foundations and the derived theories and techniques used by a wide range of communication systems, particularly the more recent digital systems. The aim is to provide the very mathematical foundation for understanding modern communication systems, present the structure of modern communication systems and the basic issues at each stage in the system, and create a theoretical background that applies to all communication systems and is not affected by any particular technology.

15 credits

Wireless Packet Data Networks and Protocols

The aim of this module is to give an understanding of the functionality of packet switching protocols at different layers of a wireless system and to appreciate how these protocols achieve reliable data delivery in wireless communication systems. The module also includes an introduction to packet switching in wireless networks; radio link protocols, CRC, ARQ and hybrid-ARQ; MAC protocols; packet scheduling and differentiated quality of service; routing, IP protocol, mobile IP, wireless TCP and end-to-end quality of service; radio resource management, network planning and optimisation; network examples - WiFi, HSPA or LTE.

15 credits