Undergraduates.

Areas of Undergraduate Concentration

In addition to other prescribed courses, both EE and ECE majors must select a minimum of four upper-level courses in at least two areas of departmental undergraduate concentration, with no less than two courses in one of the elected areas. For students expecting to enter the engineering profession after graduation, a two-course or three-course sequence prepares the student for professional work in that area of concentration. For all students, including those expecting to enter fields such as medicine, law, or business management, these upper-level courses reinforce the broad relevance of the powerful problem-solving methodologies of engineering and illuminate enabling technologies for breathtaking applications of technology.

The following brief descriptions of the six currently identified areas of undergraduate concentration may be helpful in matching topics to personal interests. Students wishing more information about any of these important areas are encouraged to discuss course choices with their Faculty Advisor or with the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Courses specific to each area of undergraduate concentration are listed at EE Concentration Electives for EE majors and at ECE Concentration Electives for ECE majors.

• Computer Engineering and Digital Systems: The discipline concerned with the operation and design of computers and computer-based systems. Although analog computers, in which electrical signals directly represent physical quantities, were historically important in the development of modern computers (and continue to be used in some systems), digital computers are today predominant and are the primary focus of the computer engineering effort in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Pratt School.

  The Computer Engineering curriculum begins with a course in logic design which studies the binary language of digital systems, and the means for manipulating and storing ones and zeroes to accomplish useful functions. Students can then study computer architecture (how modern computers work, and how to design them), computer networking, VLSI chip design, and other advanced topics. Computer engineering interfaces strongly with many other areas of electrical engineering (electronics, electromagnetics, signal processing, and control theory) as well as with computer science. The Digital Systems curriculum is a set of advanced courses in the Computer engineering curriculum; it assumes that students have mastered the material in the two prerequisite courses ECE 52L and ECE 152.

• Signal Processing, Communications, and Control Systems: The disciplines concerned with representing, storing, interpreting, and transmitting information in systems of finite capacity in the presence of interference and noise; with extracting information from speech, image, video, radar, sonar, and medical data signals; and with using information, including feedback information comparing actual and desired system states, for controlling, shaping and stabilizing system performance in the presence of noise, delay, and inertia. Applications include telecommunications, intra- and inter-system communications, remote sensing, imaging, robotics, feed-back stabilized electronics, and the remote control of electro-mechanical systems, both large and small.

• Solid-State Devices and Integrated Circuits: This area is concerned with the properties and manufacture of building-block devices (diodes, transistors, lasers) used in integrated circuits (IC's) to build electronic and photonic systems, and with their integration into circuits. Example applications include: digital computer components (CPUs, RAM, CDROM), telecommunications equipment components (parts essential for cell phones, digital switches, modems), and displays, which underlie a large array of consumer products (televisions, CD players, VCR's etc). It also encompasses the burgeoning field of microelectromechanical, micromechanical and microfluidic devices made possible by the fabrication techniques underlying integrated circuit mamanufacture.

• Control Systems and Robotics: The discipline concerned with methods to regulate and optimize quantities such as temperature, altitude, and speed over time. For example, control methods are used in airplanes to maintain a desired heading, speed, and altitude. Control methods are used in an array of devices/systems including: jet engines, artificial pancreas, automobile emission systems, modern elevators, factory machines, cameras, washing machines, and power plants. Feedback is a key concept in control systems. The system quantities being controlled are sensed, fed back and used to control the system. The theory of control is based on firm mathematical foundations including differential equations, optimization and stability theory.   (Control Systems and Robotics is approved as a separate area of concentration through 2008. Thereafter, it is part of the Signal Processing, Communications and Control Systems area.)

• Electromagnetic Fields: The discipline concerned with the interaction of electromagnetic waves with materials. Applications of electromagnetics include microwave circuits (used in satellite communication systems, mobile/cellular radios, aeronautical navigation instruments), optical fiber communication systems, radar (tracking, imaging, guidance), radio astronomy, antennas (single and phased arrays), transmission lines and waveguides. Also, radio frequency (RF) signals and microwaves are used in numerous industrial, scientific and medical applications. These include: RF and microwave induced hyperthermia for cancer therapy, drying, sterilization, thawing and curing of materials (including the cooking of food!).

• Photonics: The discipline concerned with the application of optical and optoelectronic technologies in information science. Photonic applications include information transmission on fiber and free space networks, data storage on disks and volume media, visible and infrared imaging systems, and displays. The Duke photonics program emphasizes hands-on experience with optical systems in communications, sensing, and display applications. Photonic engineering at Duke spans experiences as diverse as logical layer analysis of network protocols over fiber systems, analysis and testing of fiber dispersion, materials studies for optical memory, design of 3D microscopes for biomedical imaging, testing of liquid crystal materials and interfaces, analysis and construction of quantum dynamic systems, and explorations of later-material and laser-tissue interactions.