Circuits for Computer Engineers
DC and AC circuit analysis for digital hardware, built around a solar-powered traffic counter board: charge, current, voltage, power and energy budgets, Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's laws, voltage dividers, pull-up resistors and level shifting with worst-case tolerance analysis, nodal analysis with a Gaussian-elimination solver, mesh analysis and superposition, Thévenin and Norton equivalents, loading and ADC settling, op-amp amplifiers and comparators with hysteresis, capacitors, inductors, flyback protection and decoupling, RC and RL transients for bus rise times and switch debouncing, second-order ringing, damping and transmission-line termination, phasors and complex impedance, and AC power, Bode plots and filter design, with Python used to check every calculation.
CMP-240 Year 2 3 credits 12 lessons · 4 h 29 min ▶ Video lessons coming soon
Offered by HSM University · Computer Engineering
This is the Canadian version of this course. See the American version.
What you'll learn
- Apply charge, current, voltage, power and energy to digital hardware, using the passive sign convention and duty-cycle-weighted energy budgets.
- Analyse resistive circuits with Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's current and voltage laws, and check resistor values, tolerances and power ratings.
- Design voltage dividers, current dividers, pull-up and pull-down resistors and level shifters, including worst-case analysis with tolerances.
- Solve any linear circuit by nodal analysis, including supernodes, and implement a nodal solver using Gaussian elimination.
- Solve planar circuits by mesh analysis, including supermeshes, and apply superposition to circuits with several sources.
- Find Thévenin and Norton equivalents by calculation and by measurement, and use them to predict loading, output resistance and ADC settling.
- Analyse op-amp buffers, inverting, non-inverting and difference amplifiers, and comparators with hysteresis, using the ideal model and its limits.
- Explain the behaviour of real capacitors and inductors, protect switches from inductive kickback, and size decoupling and reservoir capacitors.
- Calculate first-order RC and RL transients, threshold-crossing times and rise times, and apply them to bus timing, debouncing and settling.
- Describe second-order step responses using natural frequency and damping ratio, damp ringing on signal lines, and terminate transmission lines.
- Represent sinusoids as phasors, analyse AC circuits with complex impedance, and model the high-frequency behaviour of real capacitors.
- Calculate AC power and power factor, sketch and interpret Bode plots, and design RC anti-aliasing and damped LC supply filters.
Course content
12 lessons · 4 h 29 min total · final exam
- 1 Charge, current, voltage, power and the circuit model 22 min · quiz
- 2 Resistors, Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's laws 22 min · quiz
- 3 Series, parallel and divider circuits in digital hardware 22 min · quiz
- 4 Nodal analysis 22 min · quiz
- 5 Mesh analysis and superposition 21 min · quiz
- 6 Thévenin and Norton equivalents and loading 22 min · quiz
- 7 Op-amps and comparators as building blocks 25 min · quiz
- 8 Capacitors, inductors and decoupling 25 min · quiz
- 9 First-order transients: RC and RL circuits 22 min · quiz
- 10 Second-order response and ringing on signal lines 21 min · quiz
- 11 Sinusoids, phasors and impedance 22 min · quiz
- 12 AC power, frequency response and filters 23 min · quiz
- E Final exam 20 questions
Requirements
Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.
Description
DC and AC circuit analysis for digital hardware, built around a solar-powered traffic counter board: charge, current, voltage, power and energy budgets, Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's laws, voltage dividers, pull-up resistors and level shifting with worst-case tolerance analysis, nodal analysis with a Gaussian-elimination solver, mesh analysis and superposition, Thévenin and Norton equivalents, loading and ADC settling, op-amp amplifiers and comparators with hysteresis, capacitors, inductors, flyback protection and decoupling, RC and RL transients for bus rise times and switch debouncing, second-order ringing, damping and transmission-line termination, phasors and complex impedance, and AC power, Bode plots and filter design, with Python used to check every calculation.
Part of the Engineering stream, typically taken in year 2.