EECS 411: Microwave Circuits I

Instructor: Professor Amir Mortazawi

Coverage
EECS411 introduces students to the operation, design, characterization and measurement of basic circuit components employed in radio frequency (RF) communication systems. These are essential for students who would like to pursue a career in the field of wireless communications. The course will cover planar transmission-lines including microstrip and coplanar lines, S-parameters, matching networks, power divider/combiners, directional couplers, low-pass and band-pass filters, diode detectors, mixers, attenuators, phase-shifters as well as high gain and low noise RF amplifiers. Students will be familiarized with the design, fabrication, and measurement (1-10GHz) of RF and microwave circuits using state of the art high frequency CAD tools and network/spectrum analyzers.

Lab
The laboratory experiments and demos will address the practical aspects of the course such as familiarization with RF/Microwave measurement instruments, the design of two, three and four port planar circuits, noise in microwave circuits and small signal RF amplifier design.

Lab 1: Lab lecture I
Lab 2: CAD (ADS) tutorial I
Lab 3: CAD (ADS) tutorial II
Lab 4: Experiment I: Matching networks
Lab 5: Experiment II: High Frequency Lumped Element Components
Lab 6: Experiment III: Directional Couplers
Lab lecture II: Noise and Nonlinearity Characterization
Lab 7: Experiment IV: Low Noise RF Amplifier Design
Lab 8: Experiment V: Filter Design

Additional Information
A design project is required during the later part of the semester. Students design various receiver frontends using RF components that have been designed throughout the course.

Textbook(s)
Pozar, David M. Microwave Engineering. 3 ed. New York, NY: Wiley, 2004.

Syllabus
1. Lumped and Distributed Circuit Elements
2. Planar (printed circuit) Transmission Lines
3. Microwave Network Analysis (ABCD, S-Parameters)
4. Lumped and Distributed Matching Circuits, Multi Section Broadband Transformers
5. Three & Four Port Networks, Design and Applications of Power Dividers, Directional Couplers and other Hybrids
6. Noise in Microwave Circuits, Noise Figure, Noise Measurement, Linearity, Dynamic Range
7. High Gain and Low Noise RF Amplifier Design
8. Periodic Structures, Filter design Concepts, Transmission Line Filters
9. Transmission Line Resonators
10. Frequency Mixers
11. Radio Receivers, Operation, Frequency Planning