Electrical & Computer Engineering

• ENG EC 565: Introduction to Electromagnetics and Photonics
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASPY212 & CASMA226) ; Undergraduate Corequisites: (ENGEC401) - Graduate Prerequisites: Familiarity with undergraduate electromagnetics - This course familiarizes the student with fundamental concepts in electromagnetics and photonics that govern the generation, propagation, and reception of fields and waves in the optical and radio-frequency domains. Topics include the formulation of Maxwell's equations; propagation in free-space, waveguides, and dispersive or anisotropic media, including metamaterials; lightwave interactions at interfaces; radiation and scattering theory for antennas and from apertures. There will be a strong emphasis on connecting these theoretical concepts to current and emerging applications and technologies.
• ENG EC 568: Optical Fibers and WaveGuides
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC455) or consent of instructor - Whether it be the FIOS? internet connection at our homes, or fiber lasers powerful enough to cut metals (many automobile chassis are now made using fiber lasers), or the ability to perform endoscopic surgery and imaging, or doing frequency metrology with super-continuum sources (the basis of a few recent Nobel prizes)... the optical fiber has played a central, often dominant, role in many applications that impact the way we live. The main function of an optical fiber is to carry an electromagnetic (in the optical frequency) pulse over distances ranging from meters to greater than ten thousand kilometers without distortions. Fibers can also become smart light-pipes when they are intentionally designed to alter, temporally shape or amplify light pulses. Moreover, new developments in this field such as photonic bandgap fibers, fiber nanowires and higher-order mode fibers, are opening up new directions in science and technology. This course will introduce the optical fiber waveguide and its theory of operation. Specifically, the design and impact of the two most important properties in optical fibers -- dispersion and nonlinearity -- that govern the evolution of light in optical fibers, will be covered in detail. The latter part of the course will describe new fibers and fiber-structures that are active research topics today. One lecture of the course will include a tour of an actual, industrial-scale fiber fabrication facility.
• ENG EC 570: Lasers and Applications
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC455) - Review of wave optics. Gaussian, Hermite-Gaussian, Laguerre-Gaussian, and Bessel optical beams. Planar- and spherical-mirror resonators; microresonators. Photons and photon streams. Energy levels; absorption, spontaneous emission, and simulated emission. Thermal and scattered light. Laser amplification and gain saturation. Laser oscillation. Common lasers and introduction to pulsed lasers. Photon interactions in semiconductors. LEDs, laser diodes, quantum-confined lasers, and microcavity lasers. Introductoin to photon detectors. Laboratory experiments: beam optics; longitudinal laser modes; laser-diode output characteristics.
• ENG EC 571: Digital VLSI Circuit Design
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC311 & ENGEC410) - Graduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC605) or instructor consent - Very-large-scale integrated circuit design. Review of FET basics. Functional module design, including BiCMOS, combinational and sequential logic, programmable logic arrays, finite-state machines, ROM, and RAM. Fabrication techniques, layout strategies, scalable design rules, design-rule checking, and guidelines for testing and testability. Analysis of factors affecting speed of charge transfer, power requirements, control and minimization of parasitic effects, survey of VLSI applications. Extensive CAD laboratory accompanies course.
• ENG EC 572: Computational Methods in Materials Science
  Graduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC577) consent of instructor - Introduction to computational materials science. Multi-scale simulation methods; electronic structure, atomistic, micro-structure, continuum, and mathematical analysis methods; rate processes and rare events. Materials defect theory; modeling of crystal defects, solid micro-structures, fluids, polymers, and bio-polymers. Materials scaling theory: phase transition, dimensionality, and localization. Perspectives on predictive materials design. Topics covered include tight binding theory, density functional theory, and many-body perturbation theory. Lectures provide the theoretical framework for computation. Same as CAS CH 455, GRS CH 572, ENG MS 508. Students may not receive credit for both.
• ENG EC 573: Solar Energy Systems
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEK408) graduate standing or permission of the instructor. ENG EC 471 is sugg ested. - This course is designed for first year graduate and senior undergraduate students from engineering disciplines. It is intended to educate students in the design and applications of solar energy technology. It will focus on fundamentals of solar energy conversion, solar cells, optical engineering, photoelectrochemical cells, thermoelectric generators, and energy storage and distribution systems. The course covers solar energy insolation and global energy needs, current trends in photovoltaic energy engineering, solar cell materials science, design and installation of solar panels for residential and industrial applications and connections to the national grid and cost analysis of the overall system. In addition, basic manufacturing processes for the production of solar panels, environmental impacts, and the related system engineering aspects will be included to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art approach to solar energy utilization. Same as ENG MS 573. Students may not take credit for both.
• ENG EC 574: Physics of Semiconductor Materials
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASPY313 OR ENGEC410) or equivalent - This course teaches the relevant notions of quantum mechanics and solid state physics necessary to understand the operation and the design of modern semiconductor devices. Specifically, this course focuses on the engineering aspects of solid state physics that are important to study the electrical and optical properties of semiconductor materials and devices. Particular emphasis is placed on the analysis of the electronic structure of semiconductor bulk systems and low-dimensional structures, the study of the carrier transport properties and the calculation of the optical response that are relevant to the design and optimization of electronics and photonics semiconductor devices. The students will learn to apply the quantum mechanical formalism to the solution of basic engineering device problems (quantum wells, wires, and dots, 2D electron gas) and to perform numerical calculation on more complex systems (band structure calculation of bulk and low dimensional systems). Same as ENG MS 574. Students may not receive credits for both.
• ENG EC 575: Semiconductor Devices
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC410 & ENGEC455 & ENGEC574 & CASPY313) or equivalent. - Fundamentals of carrier generation, transport, recombination, and storage in semiconductors. Physical principles of operation of the PN junction, metal-semiconductor contact, bipolar junction transistor, MOS capacitor, MOSFET (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor), JFET (Junction Field Effect Transistor), and bipolar junction transistor. Develops physical principles and models that are useful in the analysis and design of integrated circuits.
• ENG EC 577: Electronic Optical and Magnetic Properties of Materials
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASPY313) or equivalent, and CAS MA 225 or CAS MA 226 - This course provides an in-depth analysis of solid-state physics as it pertains to materials science and electrical engineering applications. Students will develop an understanding of the theory of crystal structures and their determination via diffraction, as well as the thermal, electrical, and optical properties of materials that arise from these structures. Same as ENG MS 577. Students may not receive credit for both.
• ENG EC 578: Fabrication Technology for Integrated Circuits
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC410) Senior standing or permission of the instructor. ; Undergraduate Corequisites: (ENGEC410) - Presentation of fabrication procedures for silicon-integrated circuits: physical properties of bulk and epitaxially grown silicon; silicon processing, such as oxidation, diffusion, epitaxy, deposition, and ion implantation; silicon crystallography, anisotropic etching, photolithography, piezorestivity, and chemical and plasma techniques. The limitations these processes impose on the design of bipolar and MOS devices and integrated circuits are discussed. Design of an integrated circuit and the required processing. Includes lab.
• ENG EC 579: Nano/microelectronic Device Technology
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Senior standing in the engineering, physics, or chemistry disciplines, or consent of instructor. - The main physical processes and manufacturing strategies for the fabrication and manufacture of micro and nanoelectronic devices will be covered, mostly for silicon, although exciting materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes will also be covered. A key emphasis here will be on electron- hole transport, band structure, basic quantum effects, and the use of engineering and physical effects to alter semiconductor device performance. Photolithography, a significant factor in manufacturability, will be covered in some detail, and to a lesser degree, so will doping methods, diffusion, oxidation, etching, and deposition. The overall integration with methods and tools employed by device and circuit designers will be covered. Same as ENG ME579. Students may not receive credit for both.
• ENG EC 580: Analog VLSI Circuit Design
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC412) - Anatomy of an operational amplifier using chip design techniques. Applications of op amps in wave-shaping circuits, active filters including capacitive switching. Analog multiplexing and data acquisition circuits, A/D, D/A, S/H are examined. Frequency selective circuits and interface circuits such as optocouplers are analyzed.
• ENG EC 583: Power Electronics for Energy systems
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (ENGEC410) - Introduction to power electronics with emphasis on conversion circuits for energy systems. DC to DC conversion using buck, boost, and buck-boost converters. DC to AC inverters. Connection to power grid. Properties of MOS transistors used for high power conversion applications. Properties of magnetic elements and interactions with power circuits. Applications of power electronic circuits to energy systems, including solar cell installations, wave and wind power, and electric vehicles. High frequency inductors and transformers.
• ENG EC 585: Quantum Engineering & Technology (QET)
  This course introduces graduate students to Quantum Engineering and Technology (QET) by providing a comprehensive and rigorous discussion of the basic principles and engineering design concepts of quantum coherent structures and devices for communications, computation, simulation, metrology, and sensing. this course will provide in-depth discussion of design methods, mathematical techniques, and engineering applications for the control of coherent quantum systems that drive the rapidly emerging "quantum supremacy" paradigm of computing and information processing. This course provides a broad yet rigorous foundation of quantum technology that exploits non-classical correlations and coherent superposition effects to achieve fundamentally novel optical and electronic functions on photonic and solid-state devices. A distinctive feature of this course is to present the material in strong partnership with "hands-on" computer simulations that demonstrate quantum mechanical principles and ideas "in action".
• ENG EC 591: Photonics Lab I
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (CASPY313) ; Undergraduate Corequisites: (ENGEC562) - Introduction to optical measurements. Laser safety issues. Laboratory experiments: introduction to lasers and optical alignment; interference; diffraction and Fourier optics; polarization components; fiber optics; optical communications; beam optics; longitudinal laser modes. Optical simulation software tools.
• ENG EC 601: Product Design in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate Standing or permission of instructor. - Engineers influence their community, society and the world. Engineers build products and services that can enhance people's lives. The product starts with an idea and is delivered through research (technical and societal), design, implementation, testing and support. During this class, students will experience all of this. The course provides design and practical insights into building products that involve WEB and mobile app development, data simulation, analysis and modeling, cloud computing, signal processing and/or computer vision. In the class, we work on how to take an idea and concept and translate it into product requirements. Afterwards, we translate the product requirements into system and engineering requirements. We also discuss solution selection techniques. We then work on implementing our ideas into systems and verify that they address the product requirements and fulfill the concept we started with. During the class, we go over how to choose solutions to build our products. We also discuss real product realization, implementations and tradeoffs. The class is taught via an example product and the class sessions are interactive. Students are divided into groups where they work in parallel on their projects during class sessions and hackathons. Teams define their target audience, product mission, requirements and features. The class adopts agile software development based on a two-week sprint. Students present their sprint results to the class.
• ENG EC 602: Design by Software
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing or permission of instructor. - Software plays a central role in all aspects of electrical and computer engineering. This course will provide the foundation for effectively using software as a key part of a career as a professional electrical or computer engineer. Fundamentals of software development systems: system languages, high-level object-oriented languages, and computational languages. Data structures and algorithms in problem analysis and design. Strategies for designing software and designing with software. Software design and development: methodologies, principles and practice. Formalizing software: management, requirements, specifications, testing. Survey of software applications in ECE, including real-time systems, the web, networked systems, audio, graphics, and video systems, research and engineering analysis, consumer electronics and computing, instrumentation and measurement, design, modeling, prototyping, simulation, optimization and information analysis. Students can choose projects and assignments with application to/inspired by/drawn from a broad array of ECE fields including the traditional areas of electro-physics/photonics, computer engineering, and information and data science. Open to graduate students only.
• ENG EC 605: Computer Engineering Fundamentals
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor. - This is an introductory course to computer engineering, focusing on the hardware/software interface, and presenting a bottom-up view of a computer system. Topics include logic design: binary arithmetic, combinational and sequential logic. Computer organization: assembly language programming, CPU design, and memory systems. Introduction to compilers, operating systems, and computer networks. Open to graduate students only.
• ENG EC 674: Optimization Theory 2
  This course is an introduction to optimization problems and algorithms emphasizing problem formulation, basic methodologies and the underlying mathematical structures. We will cover the classical theory as well as the state of the art. The major topics we will cover are: 1. Theory and algorithms for linear programming. 2. Introduction to combinatorial problems and methods for handling intractable problems. 3. Introduction to nonlinear programming. 4. Introduction to network optimization. Optimization techniques have many applications in science and engineering. To name a few: * Optimal routing in communication networks. * Transmission scheduling and resource allocation in sensor networks. * Production planning and scheduling in manufacturing systems. * Fleet management. * Air traffic flow management by airlines. * Optimal resource allocation in manufacturing and communication systems. * Optimal portfolio selection. * Analysis and optimization of fluxes in metabolic networks. * Protein docking. Prerequisites: Working knowledge of Linear Algebra and some degree of mathematical maturity. Same as ENG EC 674, ENG SE 524, ENG EC 674. Students may not receive credits for both.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Teamwork/Collaboration
• ENG EC 700: Advanced Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: Graduate standing or consent of instructor. - Advanced topics of current interest in electrical and computer engineering.