WPL 1.12 Electronics laboratory

Overview

The Electronics Laboratory allows students to explore, design, develop and test precision components, systems or equipment that use electricity as their power source.

Electronics touches on almost all areas of human activity today, with many diverse applications. Areas include defence, medical instrumentation, mobile communications, satellite communication, nanotechnology, power generation, robotics and transport (Aeronautical, Automotive, Rail, Marine).

This laboratory is used for the teaching of practical electronics taught modules. This area is used by several engineering schools that include Wolfson, Physics and ACME. The majority of all Wolfson School electronics modules are taught in WPL1.12.

In this lab we teach about:

  • Electronic Circuits
  • Transmission Lines
  • Antennas
  • Digital Systems
  • Communications
  • Control
  • Interfacing for Mechatronic Systems
  • Power Electronics
  • Various Experiments Boards

An example of a module taught in this lab would be:

Characteristics and Parameters of an NPN Bipolar Transistor Amplifier

Objectives:

  • To understand the electrical characteristics of an NPN transistor
  • To determine the small signal parameters for a bipolar transistor
  • To measure the important parameters of a simple amplifier.

Equipment in this laboratory includes:

  • Tektronix AFG1022 Function Generator
  • Keithley 2231A 30-3 Tripple Channel DC Power Supply
  • Keithley 2110 5 1/2 Digital Multimeter (X2)
  • Tektronix MD03024 Oscilloscope
  • Rohde & Swharz FS315 Spectrum Analyzer
  • National Instruments ELVIS (Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite) Series Prototyping Board
  • 42 + HP Desktop PCs