Electrical Engineering

This course provides the basic tools and knowledge needed to design optical systems. At the end of the course, students will be able to take system requirements, select possible components and approaches, create candidate designs, and analyze and optimize their performance. Students learn and utilize standard optical design tools, particularly ray-tracing, as well as learning how to create custom system models with wave, polarization, or Gaussian-beam optical modeling. The course objectives include basic design techniques for ray optics; wave optics in isotopic media; design concepts for optical instruments (microscope, telescope, camera lenses); aberration in optical system (real world problems); how to select optical components (lenses, fibers, optical source and detectors); and optical CAD tools discussion (ZEMAX education version).

This course addresses modeling and control of dynamic systems. It focuses on systems that can be modeled by Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs), and that satisfy certain linearity and time-invariance conditions (a.k.a. LTI systems).  The course also analyzes the output response of these systems to initial conditions and inputs; investigates feedback control on LTI systems, and introduces the methods of classical control techniques.  Students learn how to design a controller that ensures desirable properties (e.g., stability, performance, and robustness) with a given dynamic system.

Recently, sensor networks, cyber physics systems, and internet of things have become popular because sensing, communication, and analytics technologies matured. In the future, digital sensing, communication, and processing capabilities will be ubiquitously embedded into everyday objects, turning them into an Internet of Things (IoT, also known as, machine-to-machine, M2M). Sensors everywhere can continuously collect a large quantity of data; processors everywhere can analyze and infer useful knowledge from the data; communication ratios can transmit and exchange useful knowledge with other everyday objects to serve humans better. This paradigm shift which can significantly improve our life brings up numerous challenges and opportunities to engineering. This course plans to encourage students from multiple disciplines to collaborate with each other and create innovative IoT applications/services to improve our daily life. Electrical engineering students from NTU and NTU Science and Technology collaborate with design students from NTU to design prototypes of Internet of Things products that improve our daily lives. Teams present a live demonstration of their project at the end of the quarter.

The objective of this course is, starting from the requirements for vehicle propulsion, to present the different options in terms of vehicle energy converters, that have the potential for near-zero pollutant emissions and defossilization. The course deals with powertrains for vehicles. The expectations are that in a sustainable society, transportation powertrains will be a mix between battery electric, fuel cell, combustion engines, and hybrids. The combustion engines would then be powered by renewable fuels produced using sustainable sources. The main features of the different energy converters are given, with their pros and cons, followed by a detailed discussion for each option. Challenges to the combustion engine fueled by fossil fuels are discussed. The different configurations for hybrid powertrains and criteria for choosing the optimum configurations are presented. Plug-in hybrids and range-extended hybrids are discussed. The main features for hydrogen fuel cells and battery electric drive are stated, including advantages and challenges, as well as expected future trends for the different transportation modes.