6.101 is an introductory electronics laboratory. You will learn about the basic principles of analog circuit design and operation in a practical, real-world laboratory setting. You will work both with discrete components such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, and transistors as well as with integrated components such as operational amplifiers. In addition, you will become familiar with the operation of basic electronic test equipment (digital multimeters, oscilloscopes, function generators, curve tracers, etc.). There are six labs due weekly which start out as cookbook types and progress to design exercises; there are group design projects for the second half of the term.

Note: The Instructor will be available for scheduled lab assistance hours for 4 hours per week, and the TA's each will be available for scheduled lab assistance hours for 10 hours per week. We also encourage you to meet with us at other times by appointment or when you can find us!

Instructor: Ron Roscoe

Problem sets will be given out weekly on Wednesday for five weeks of the course, starting with the second week. They are due at the start of the class the following Wednesday.

• Homework - 10%
• 2 Quizzes -- 15%
• Labs --------- 25%
• Project ------ 50%

During the initial part of the course (the first half of the semester), you will perform and turn in six laboratory experiments. They start out as fairly simple "cook-book'' experiments and progress into design exercises. Labs 1, 5 and 6 require check-offs. These laboratories will be handed out in class on Friday, except for Lab 1, and the write-ups will be due in the TA's office on Friday of the following week. There will be no credit for late submissions, unless a written medical excuse is provided.

Note: You should expect that these laboratory assignments will take you on the order of 10 hours a week, on average. You will find it very difficult to finish them properly unless you start them early and plan on devoting a significant amount of time to them. The first lab is a long one, and you have 10 days to complete it. 

You are expected to maintain a laboratory notebook to record all of your work in the laboratory. Since you will need your notebooks for each of the assignments, you may either separately write up your solutions to the assignments and/or hand in Xeroxes of the appropriate pages of your laboratory notebooks for your laboratory write-ups. In some cases, you may find that the record of your work in your notebook is difficult to follow, due to "false starts," the presence of many "scratch'' calculations, etc. In these cases, you may want to summarize your work on a particular problem in your notebook and hand in a Xerox of the summary pages. In any event, your submissions must be NEAT and CLEARLY ORGANIZED. You will not get credit for work if the TA cannot follow what you did. Be sure that you have a backup copy of ANYTHING you hand in, in case something gets lost or damaged!! 

Although you should feel free to discuss your work with your fellow students and of course the staff of 6.101, you are expected to work individually on each laboratory and the work which appears in your lab write-ups should be your own.

The subjects covered by the six labs are as follows: 

• RF Transmission and Reception; Q and bandwidth of tuned circuits, AM detection
  
  
• Log Amplifier; Rectifier Diodes and Rectifier Power Supplies; Zener Diodes; Bipolar and FET characteristics using the Tektronix Curve Tracer
   
• DC biasing considerations in bipolar and FET amplifiers; "Wind Your Own Inductor"; how capacitors affect low frequency response; using an FET as an analog switch
  
  
• Operational Amplifiers: inverting configuration: output offset, gain, bandwidth, slew rate, saturation; Comparing the LM741 and LF356; inverting adder; voltage follower; Schmitt Trigger; integrator, differentiator; precision rectifier; adding push-pull output stages
  
  
• Op-amp power amp with improved push-pull output stages; two-transistor differential amplifier; bipolar and FET current sources; 555 sawtooth generator and VCO [Note: this lab requires a check-off in lab.]
   
• Series-pass DC voltage regulator; low-battery indicator; three-input op-amp mixer and gain control stages for Lab 5 power amp. [Note: this lab requires a check-off in lab.]

During the last half of the semester, you will be working on a design project. The class will be broken into teams of 3 persons, and each team will decide on a project. This project must be conceived in terms of a "product'' that your team will design, with a set of overall objectives and especially with a set of minimum specifications which it must meet. Each team will then compete to design the best product (most elegant design, best performance, most closely meets specifications, most intuitively operated, lowest parts count and parts cost, etc.). Suggested projects will be distributed in an e-mail later in the term.

[Important: Many of the ideas that will intrigue you can also be implemented using "digital" techniques; however, this is an analog course; use of digital circuitry in your final project design will result in points being deducted from your project grade, unless you get permission in advance from the design staff, which means there has to be NO other way to achieve a certain function without the digital circuitry. If the main function of your project uses digital techniques, forget it!! Also forbidden are dedicated "chips" such as National's "AM-radio-on-a-chip" that require little understanding of the circuit operation to use. We want to teach you to learn to design things using the basic building blocks: op-amps, FET switches, current mirrors, discretes, etc. We want to train you so you can go to work for Linear Technology or Analog Devices and design sophisticated chips!]

The objective of the design project is to simulate the process of system design as it might occur in a "real-world'' manufacturing environment. You can think of your team as working for a company who has identified a product in which consumers are interested. Your team will have to develop an implementation strategy, design the required circuitry, debug it and achieve a final implementation, complete with documentation. This will give you a chance to deal with real-world design issues: what are the trade-offs involved in choosing a design, how does one select specific parts, how much power will the circuit draw and how do you design a suitable power supply, how should the circuit be laid out, packaged, etc.? Your final report will consist not only of a description of your circuit and how it operates but also a detailed description of the design process you followed.

The department provides a limited budget [roughly $150 per project] to fund your project. In addition to using parts from your lab kits and the stockroom, you will be able to purchase additional components as needed to complete your design. The details of how much each team will have to spend and the process for purchasing parts will be announced later in the semester.

For your design project you will be expected to keep a complete record of your work (circuit ideas, calculations, results of your measurements and experiments, etc.) in your laboratory notebook. In addition to being good practice, your notebook will provide an accurate record of the various stages of your project to which you and your teammates will need to refer as you write the final report describing your project. At the end of the semester, we will collect your laboratory notebooks along with your design project reports. We will review your notebook as a record of your work in 6.101 and will consider it when evaluating your performance in the course.

The final oral presentation and written report for the design project will be a team effort. Some of you may want to use your work on the design project to form the basis for a report to be submitted for phase-2 writing credit. You can do this simply by submitting a separate report on that portion of the design project for which you are primarily responsible. Note that you should keep this in mind as you divide up the responsibility on the design project since some parts of the project are more likely than others to lend themselves to a separate write up.

During the second half of the term, your lab time will be devoted to your design project. You will make an oral presentation/demonstration at the end of the term to the teaching staff, and you will also turn in a written report at that time. Time slots for your oral presentations will be selected in the last class and changes will not be allowed. The team with the best overall project, based on electrical performance and project report, will win an auto-ranging DMM that also measures beta, capacitance and temperature or a one-year subscription to the analog journal Electronics World [equal values, believe it or not!]

Your group will also meet with the instructing staff on approximately a bi-weekly basis to discuss your block diagrams, circuit schematics, etc. so that we may monitor your progress, much as engineering design reviews in industry are conducted. Part of this monitoring procedure includes a graded checkoff of the operation of your basic circuitry.

As has been discussed, you can submit a separate report on that portion of the design project for which you are primarily responsible towards completion of your phase-2 writing requirement. In order to be considered for phase-2 credit, your report must:

• consist of at least 10 pages of written text (not counting tables, schematics, figures, appendices, etc.), and 
• receive a grade of B or better on technical content. 

There will be a presentation during the semester by a representative of the writing program who will talk about technical writing in general and specifically how your paper will be judged by the phase-2 staff. If you want your paper to be submitted to phase-2, you need to fill out the appropriate forms. If it receives a 6.101-grade of A or B, Mr. Roscoe will sign the form before you submit it in the course VI undergraduate office, which will submit it for phase-2 review. When it is returned to the office, it will translate the writing grade into a pass or fail for phase-2 and will notify the Registrar's office if you pass.

Neaman, Donald A. Electronic Circuit Analysis and Design. 2nd ed. McGraw Hill, 2001. [ISBN 007 245 1947, comes with two free CD-Rom's]
 
Johnson, D., and V. Jayakumar. Operational Amplifier Circuits: Design and Application. Prentice-Hall, 1982. [This book is out-of-print and you may buy a photocopy at the stockroom window.]

Horowitz, P., and W. Hill. The Art of Electronics. 2nd ed. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989. [We strongly recommend that you also purchase this book. This reference will be useful in other courses and after graduation. A copy is on reserve in the library.]

The instructor maintains a library of reference books that will be useful during your project, including the recommended reference above. The books and references in this library are listed on a separate handout. You may sign out these references overnight or for an extended period, depending on the number of copies available and the demand.