Gav's World : MSc Elec Comms Eng

MSc in Electronics and Communication Engineering

This course was pretty much a waste of time for me - I actually didn't need to study it, as I was already fully employed by GEC Ferranti (or it might have been GEC Marconi by that time)... I actually wanted to try to learn about more aspects of electronic engineering, believe it or not!

The course itself changed three times in the two (part time) years that I was doing it! Even the name changed: it started off as "Advanced Electronics" then became "Integrated Electronics" before becoming the title above. I didn't get the chance to do the modules I wanted to do, partially because of the low number of students in the course.

That said, some of the modules I studied before stopping the course have proved to be useful in my professional and personal life.

Anyway, in order to pass information onto others doing a similar course, or even doing research for other reasons (engineers at work have used them), I'm keeping all of my reports available for download.

So, here are the modules I completed and their reports:

Year 1

Fixed And Mobile Radio Link Planning
- Understand propagation, link parameters and modulation schemes. Describe the radio spectrum. Calculate simple power budgets.
- Analyse an HF ionospheric mode radio link.
- Analyse a satellite up-link and down-link.
- Analyse cellular mobile radio link for both urban and indoor environments.
- Analyse an obstructed line of sight radio link.
- Report on HF prediction
Networks
- To provide an in-depth knowledge of all components of a small-scale or large-scale network.
- To understand how a network operating system integrates with standard communications protocols (such as TCP/IP and SPX/IPX) and with the hardware (ODI/NDIS).
- To understand how Internets and Intranets are constructed and how they operate.
- To provide an in-depth knowledge of the TCP/IP protocol and how TCP/IP packets are routed through interconnected networks.
- To give an understanding of how ports and sockets are used in WinSock programming.
- To be up-to-date with current and future networking technologies, so as to be able to plan short-term, medium-term and long-term IT infra-structure planning.
- Report on sockets
- Report on socket programming
Digital Devices And Techniques
- To gain good understanding of current devices and techniques.
- To gain in-depth knowledge of practical synthesis methods for digital circuits.
- To gain experience of optimization tools and techniques.
- To gain in-sight into research topics in modern digital systems.
- To learn the importance of test and how to adapt it to individual designs.
- To acquire experience in practical implementations of digital systems using industry standard devices, tools and techniques.
- Report on cyclic encoder design
- Report on cyclic encoder implementation
Postgraduate Laboratory
- Achieve practical solutions in support of theoretical concepts.
- Obtain, manipulate and present experimental data in a form appropriate to professional scientific and engineering standards.
- Perform background research for relevant data and techniques for solution to a particular problem.
- Apply principles of design.
- Prepare and present a concise written report.

Year 2

Analogue Devices And Techniques
- Understand the structure and operation of modern solid state devices.
- Have a knowledge of CMOS integrated circuit design approach and techniques.
- Have a knowledge of bi-polar integrated circuit design approach and techniques.
- Design integrated analogue circuit elements such as filters.
- Report on amplifier design
Digital Signal Processing
- Design and implement various types of digital filters and FFT algorithms.
- Demonstrate a deep understanding of fundamental and advanced DSP techniques.
- Design and implement adaptive filters.
- Apply DSP techniques to various practical applications, image and speech processing for example.
- Report on synthesis of human speech
Digital Communications Systems
- Understand the basis of digital communications.
- Understand and evaluate system performance.
- Evaluate different coding techniques for error performance.
- Evaluate different coding techniques for bit-rate reduction.
- Understand the implications of international recommendations.
- Report on ADSL
Research Skills
- Understand and apply principles of research to his or her field of study.
- Understand and apply the principles of managing a project.
- Perform a literature review.
- Organise and perform data collections, analyse and presentation.
- Write and present a technical report.
- Understand the dynamics of team working and make a positive contribution to a team investigation.
- Critically evaluate a given research project and apply the findings appropriately.
- Develop subject specific skills.