Electronics

The roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet (Aristotle)

General Information

Note: since June 2018, the exam is an open-book one. This means you are allowed to bring with you books, slides, personal notes, past exam test solutions and so on. If you took your notes on a tablet, you can bring it (I trust you, but don't let me down); of course, data connection must be off.

Please, do not adopt the attitude that studying is useless because all the answers will be there for you to look up. Rather, study as thoroughly as you would do for any closed-book exam. Know the formulas and only look them up if necessary, so not to waste time. Do not bring excessive material, and organize it for easy and fast access.

A final note: trust me and do NOT leave this exam as last. If you do, please play it fair and do not ask for any special treatment based on this condition. I am sympathetic and supportive of all your life choices and projects and I am willing to assist you in any matter, but sometimes (though rarely) I hear requests that make it awkward for me to do my job. Rather, get ready and do a great exam; I know you can do it!

A review of poles, zeros and Bode plots (links)

Lesson handouts (and some supplementary material)

Part I: Operational amplifier circuits

  1. Amplifiers and feedback theory
  2. Linear applications of OpAmps
  3. OpAmp offset voltage and bias currents
  4. Closed-loop gain and impedances
  5. OpAmp circuit stability and compensation
  6. Instrumentation amplifiers and OpAmp parameters
  7. Wheatstone bridge

Part II: Noise

  1. Signals and noise
  2. Thermal, shot and flicker noise
  3. Signals and noise in LTI systems and OpAmps

Part III: Signal recovery

  1. White noise filtering: LPF
  2. Time-variant filters: gated integrators
  3. Boxcar averagers
  4. Discrete-time filters
  5. Optimum filtering
  6. LF noise filtering: HPF and baseline restorers
  7. Amplitude modulation and synchronous detection
  8. Lock-in amplifiers
  9. Zero-drift OpAmps

Historical stuff taught in the so-called good ol' days but no longer requested

Drills info

Dr. Davide Resnati webex room

Introductory exercise books (in Italian; available at the Faculty library):

Drill handouts

  1. Review: Laplace transform, linear circuits and Bode plots
  2. Closed-loop gain calculation
  3. I/O impedances calculation
  4. Loop compensation
  5. Multiple feedback loops
  6. Noise transfer in circuits
  7. LPFs, GIs, and BAs
  8. Optimum filters and discrete-time filters
  9. Flicker noise and BLR/CDS
  10. LIAs
  11. Extra (self-study) drill no longer given due to time constraints: Wheatstone bridge circuits

Tutorage notes

David Refaldi webex room

  1. I/O impedances

Student-provided material (keep the stuff coming, please...)

Lesson and drill recordings

Note: it appears that the MS Edge browser does not process correctly the multi-line links in the following pdfs. To open the links correctly, click on the second line of each link.

Past exam papers with solutions

Solutions provide a guideline with all the steps, but skip the maths and calculations: You ought to be already familiar with the theory and with simpler tests (such as those discussed in the drills) in order to find them useful. Please, do NOT start your exam preparation from here! Moreover, they sometimes venture into additional insights that are not necessary for the exam: don't worry and take these as oppportunities to deepen your understanding. If something is not clear or you spot errors, please get in touch!

Additional online material

Rainy day reading...

Last modified 02/25