PhD Course - Advanced hands-on electronics for research

Organizers:
Andres Faina, Associate Professor

Rodrigo Moreno, Assistant professor

Dates of the course:

Every Tuesday from April 9, 2024, to June 25 2024 from 9:00 to 12:00

In total, 12 lectures. 

Room: The course will be in person in room 4A20

Course Description:

The course is a hands-on introduction to the tools necessary to design and develop advanced electronic circuits. The students could use this knowledge to build custom, reliable circuits in their Ph.D. thesis. The topics will address advanced sensors and actuators, circuit debugging, power conversion, and advanced microcontroller programming (timers, interrupts, digital buses, etc.).

Intended learning outcomes are the following:

1. Select circuits to interact with advanced sensors, actuators, and other systems.
2. Design Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs).
3. Program microcontrollers using their specialized hardware (timers, interrupts, etc.).
4. Debug microcontrollers and electronics circuits with oscilloscopes and In-Circuit Debugging

Reading list:

We will read one or more chapters from the references below each week.

Horowitz, P., & Hill, W. (2015). The art of electronics (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Williams, E., (2016). The Art of Debugging Circuits, 6.101 Analog Electronics Lab, MIT.
Charles J., (1994) 2 - Electrical and electronics principles, Mechanical Engineer's Reference Book (Twelfth Edition), Butterworth-Heinemann.
Akin, B., & Bhardwaj, M. (2010). Sensored Field Oriented Control of 3-Phase Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors Using TMS320F2837x.

Programme:

Lecture 1: Debugging circuits: In-circuit debugging and oscilloscopes.

Lecture 2: Digital communication buses: I2C. Serial, SPI, USB, CAN, and others.

Lecture 3: Sensors: Encoders, IMUs, optical sensors, analog sensors.

Lecture 4: Actuators: Brushless and Stepper motors with Field Oriented Control (FOC).

Lecture 5: Power conversion: DC/DC converters and voltage regulators.

Lecture 6: PCB design I: circuits and schematics.

Lecture 7: PCB design II: Layout.

Lecture 8: Microcontrollers: Interrupts and timers.

Lecture 9: Microcontrollers: ADC and DAC.

Lecture 10: Microcontrollers: Other peripherals.

Lecture 11: Project I.

Lecture 12: Project II.

At the end of the course, students will work on a small project, applying the topics of the course to develop a circuit useful in their research projects.

Prerequisites:

This course expects students to have a basic understanding of electronics and how to debug simple circuits with a multimeter. In addition, they must be able to program in C and C++ and program microcontrollers at basic level (Arduino or similar). This background can be demonstrated by having passed “How to make (almost) anything” at ITU or similar courses.

If we realize that most of the course participants need background material on a certain topic, we will arrange some reading material to include that background.

Assessment:

Oral Exam with Pass/Fail result. In addition, the students must attend at least 80% of the lectures.

Credits:

5 ECTS

Amount of hours the student is expected to use on the course:

• approx. 36 hours  on weekly lectures
• approx. 48 hours on preparation 

Sign up:

Email to Andres Faina anfv@itu.dk  
or Rodrigo Moreno rodr@itu.dk to show your interest.
The course participation is limited to a maximum of 5 students.