The Department of Physics

Course Description

The main objective is to build strong foundation for the students in the area of advance digital electronics and microprocessors fundamentals and to expose them to the entire digital systems design process from gate level to system level. An overview of advanced digital system design technologies and industrial grade Electronics Design and Automation (EDA) tools is provided to develop skilled manpower in the highly demanding area of System- On- Chip Design and to encourage entrepreneurship. This course emphasizes on digital circuits/systems design using traditional as well as modern approaches. The first part of the course introduces the basic building blocks of digital systems i.e.  combinational and sequential circuits. The second part focuses on interfacing devices like memories and Analog to Digital (A/D) and Digital to Analog (D/A) convertors. The third part of the course introduces the microprocessor, arguably the most important device in the modern world without which there would be no computers and therefore no internet, no modern medical instruments, no modern telecommunications, etc. The last part of this course deals with the overview of modern digital circuit/system implementation technologies and popular EDA tools along with the entire system design process.

Course Content

Combinational Circuits: adders, subtractors, multiplexers,   de-multiplexers, encoder, decoders; Sequential Circuits: Registers, counters; Memories: Types, memory organization (RAM and ROM), memory cells; A/D and D/A Conversion:  Sample and hold technique, digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters; Microprocessor: Microprocessor evolution and its types, microprocessor based system and its operation, overview of microprocessor architecture, addressing modes, programming of microprocessor, instructions set; Digital System Design: Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs), digital system design process, various EDA tools, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based system design approach.

Course Golas/Aims

Goals for this course are as follows:

• Study of basic building blocks of a digital system i.e. combinational and sequential circuits.
• Study of Microprocessor based digital systems along with interfacing devices like ADC/DAC and Memory.
• Expose students to entire digital system design process and various industrial grade EDA tools.
• Familiarize students with advance level digital system design using FPGA chips.

Learning Outcomes

Students completing the course should be able to:

• Describe and explain fundamentals of digital electronics, microprocessor and digital system design process.
• Specify, design, analyze and test a digital circuit/system to meet a set of desired goals, within the context of a broader system application.
• Effectively communicate technical material related to microprocessor/IC (integrated Circuit) based digital circuit/system design.
• Design circuits/systems containing both hardware and software elements.
• Recognize and illustrate the key principles of one or more of the topical areas of electrical engineering: digital electronics, digital system design, VLSI (very Large Scale Integration) technology, or microelectronics.
• Use specific industrial grade EDA tools used in digital circuit/system design process.
• Debug and design various combinational and sequential circuits based on ICs.

Assessment