Courses

ECE 429 Introduction to vlsi

Course Objective
To give students a clear understanding of the fundamental concepts of modern CMOS VLSI design. Students will learn the design of complex and high performance CMOS systems from system level to circuit level.

ECE 485 computer organization and design

Course Objective
To give students a clear understanding of the fundamental concepts of modern computer design, and relationships between hardware and software. The students will learn how to completely design a correct single-processor computer, including processor datapath, processor control, memory systems, and I/O.

ECE 529 advanced vlsi design

Topics Covered
High Performance Design, Logic families, Low-Power Design, Leakage estimation and prevention, Clocking schemes and interconnect, Algorithm and architecture level optimization, High performance arithmetic units, VLSI signal processing, Advanced memory units, Reconfigurable and reprogrammable logic, FPGAs

ECE 583 advanced computer arithmetic

Course Objective
This course will cover the fundamental topics in high speed computer arithmetic unit design. The emphasis will be on understanding the implementation issues and trade-offs in VLSI technology.

ECE 584 vlsi for signal processing and communication systems

Course Objective
This course aims to convey knowledge of advanced concepts in VLSI signal processing. Emphasis is on the architectural research, design and optimization of signal processing systems used in telecommunications, compression, encryption and coding applications. Therefore, this course will focus on the implementation of signal processing systems in "systems on a chip" designs for state-of-the-art field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) or application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). The primary issue will be the choice of the architecture for the various signal processing applications and their performance, area and energy efficiencies.

Topics Covered
Topics covered include the principles of datapath design; FIR and IIR filtering architectures; communication systems including OFDM; multirate signal processing; fast transforms and algorithms including fast Fourier Transform FFT; Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT); Walsh-Hadamard Transform (WHT); and Wavelet kernels. Furthermore, advanced computer arithmetic methods including CORDIC, residue number systems (RNS), distributed arithmetic (DA), canonic signed digit systems (CSD) and reduced adder graph (RAG) algorithms are examined. Practical examples are presented in the lectures using HDL languages to verify the algorithms and architectures. The students use VHDL or Verilog language for the homework assignments and the project implementation to learn the design techniques.

ECE 587 Hardware software codesign

Course Objective
This course will cover the fundamental topics in HW/SW codesign and partitioning concepts in designing embedded systems. The emphasis will be on goals and methodology for partitioning hardware/software in embedded systems.

Topics Covered
Introduction to embedded systems, models and architectures for system specification, specification languages, system behavior capture and implementation, algorithms and techniques for system partitioning and estimation and modeling methodologies.

ECE 742 Digital system-on-chip design

Course Objective
The purpose of this course is to provide a basic understanding of contemporary topics in Systems-on-Chip design. Students learn programmable devices and the design flow for FPGAs. Students are also exposed to VHDL programming.

Topics Covered
This short course deals with System-on-Chip design concepts using hardware description languages such as VHDL. Main topics include a formal coverage of the VHDL language, digital design concepts and design for testability. Architecture emphasis will be on programmable devices including FPGAs. Several hardware implementations using advanced FGPA development tools will be discussed with demonstrations and tutorials.

ECE 743 Signal and data compression

Course Objective
The purpose of this course is to provide a basic understanding of contemporary topics in data compression. This course provides a unique combination of data compression and hardware/software realization in embedded computing systems.

Topics Covered
This short course deals with data compression techniques and hardware/software realization concepts in embedded computing systems. Key topics; fundamentals of random signal processing and information theory, compression and decompression processes, lossy and lossless compression methods, compression standards for video and audio, modeling and signal parameter estimation, transform techniques including FFT, DCT, and DWT. Hardware realizations of compression algorithms.

ECE 744 Embedded digital systems for time-frequency distribution, signal modeling and estimation

Course Objective
The purpose of this course is to provide a basic understanding of contemporary topics in time-frequency distribution, signal modeling, estimation, and hardware/software realization concepts in embedded computing systems.

Topics Covered
This short course deals time-frequency distribution, signal modeling and estimation, and hardware/software realization concepts in embedded computing systems. Key topics; introduction and the need for time-frequency analysis, Fourier series, Fourier transform, sampling theorem, time and frequency description of signal, instantaneous frequency and the complex signal, uncertainlty principle, densities and characteric functions, fundamental ideas for time-frequency distributions, short-time Fourier transform, split-spectrum processing, Gabor transform, Wigner distribution, Hilbert transform, wavelet transform, cosine transform, chirplet signal decomposition, matching pursuit, parametric time-series frequency estimation, hardware/software codesign and realizations of time-frequency distributions and signal modeling algorithms.