The exam will take place on Thursday 14th and it will consists of the following key points:

Chapter 1—Signals and Amplifiers

  • Understand the most basic and pervasive signal-processing function: signal amplification, and correspondingly, the signal amplifier.
  • How amplifiers are characterized (modeled) as circuit building blocks independent of their internal circuitry. Understand the needs for Cascaded Amplifiers and the ability to solve parameters for a cascaded amplifier (for example,the student is expected to be able to solve exercise 1.16 on page 27 of the textbook)
  • Review relevant questions on the homework #1 (e.g, question #6) and on the past exam (e.g, question 1(a))

Chapter 4—Diodes

  • Understand the characteristics of the ideal diode and how to analyze and design circuits containing multiple ideal diodes together with resistors and dc sources to realize useful and interesting nonlinear functions.
  • The ideal and constant voltage model of the diode
  • Given a diode circuit, sketch the corresponding output voltage and current, and compute RMS peak voltage and RMS peak current (see for example exercise 4.6 in the solved exercises for the diode)
  • Rectifier circuits and how they convert AC voltages to DC
  • You should be able to solve questions on homework #2. Take a particular attention to question 1, 4 and 5

Chapter 5—MOSFET

  • Understand the physical structure of the MOS transistor and how it works. You should fully understand Figure 5.1 on page 249 and all of its parameters, their units and what purpose they serve in a MOSFET
  • Know how to compute (e.g., memorize formulas) the oxide capacitance Cox, the process conductor kn, transconductance parameter kn, electron drift velocity, transistor aspect ratio, and the current iD. You should also remember what are The International System of Units (SI) in which each of these parameters is expressed in.
  • Understand how a channel for current flow in a MOSFET is created, the concept of overdrive voltage and how it is calculated, inversion layer, and the threshold voltage
  • Understand the impact on the MOSFET operation when vDS is small and when it high and how to compute the resulting iD
  • Know the various region of operation of a MOSFET (off, triode and saturation) and why they occur.
  • Know equation for iD when the MOSFET is in the triode region and when it is in the saturation region.
  • You should understand Table 5.1 (Regions of Operation of the Enhancement NMOS Transistor) on page 266, and its equations
  • Understand The iD vs vGS Characteristic (e.g., understand Figure 5.13 on page 267)
  • How to solve MOSFET Circuits at DC and understand all exercises we solved in the lecture
  • You should be able to solve questions #6 on homework #3 and questions 1 (c), and 2 on the past exams

Good luck