Electronic and Electrical Engineering Facilities
The Department has world-class facilities for teaching and research in control and automation, embedded systems, communications, power electronics, machines, drives and power systems. Our research informed teaching imparts practical skills to our students, who gain first-hand experience of industry-standard instrumentation.
The General Electronic and Electrical Engineering Laboratory
The General Electronic and Electrical Engineering Laboratory has electronic stations, each consisting of a high performance PC with double monitors, digital/analogue oscilloscope, function generator, digital multimeter and power supply. The PCs are equipped with electronic circuit design, simulation, and mathematical modelling and signal processing software. The laboratory is also equipped with soldering/de-soldering equipment. These stations are used in first and second year study.
The Control and Automation Laboratory
The Control and Automation Laboratory has work-stations consisting of National Instruments’ virtual instruments for hands-on training of: DC Motor Controller design; Mechatronic Sensor interfacing; Robotic system type rotary Inverted pendulum intelligent controller design, and Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) control system design. These work-stations are used to teach and demonstrate control and automation theory taught in 2nd year, 3rd year and Masters level study for classical, modern and intelligent feedback controller design using all forms of electrical actuation such as pulse-width modulated (PWM) power amplifiers for dc motor design.
The Embedded Systems Laboratory
The Embedded Systems Laboratory provides an environment of cutting-edge hardware platforms and software tools for developing skills to write software for micro-computing systems that are embedded in every day appliances and machines. Examples range from a fridge-freezer to a mobile phone. Many mobile phones use an ARM system architecture and the lab is equipped with ARM and Altera FPGA development kits with all the necessary supporting software libraries and hardware. It also gives access to online tools for the rapid prototyping of state-of-the-art embedded systems at all levels of study. The Altera development kit together with the ‘Quartus Prime’ software package are used for teaching basic logic circuit and processor design concepts at all levels of study.
The Electrical Machines, Drives and Power Electronics Laboratory
The Electrical Machines, Drives and Power Electronics Laboratory has Lucas-Nülle equipment which is used to teach and demonstrate the many configurations and types of ac and dc motor speed control and power generation. Electrical machines convert electrical energy into mechanical energy or vice versa. Electrical Machines are used in the laboratory to convey the necessary background theory of the circuitry and drives found in industry and commerce today and in the future. Power Electronics (PE) necessary for these drives and generators is also covered in the 3rd year and masters level study. PE is the technology of switching and converting high levels of electrical power in a way useful for machines, power generators (including renewables) and other power using devices is a vital skill and knowledge of the modern electronic and electrical engineer.
RF and Terahertz Measurement Laboratory
The RF and Terahertz Measurement Laboratory focuses on many RF and THz cross-disciplinary themes such as: imaging based quality control for large scale manufacturing industries; ferroelectric and ferromagnetic ceramics characterisation; time-resolved and temperature-dependent spectroscopy. The laboratory has a THz-TDS system (transmission, reflection and ATR modes), a 100 GHz imaging camera and an RF characterisation systems. The RF system includes a vector network analyser from 2 MHz up to 13 GHz, a high temperature dielectric characterisation probe kit and Micro-strip resonators. Terahertz (1×1011 to 1×1013 Hz) band, has demonstrated extraordinary prospects in the past ten years due to its attractive applications in material, chemical, communication and life sciences.
