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Behrooz Parhami's ECE 10A/AL Course Page for Winter 2025
Fndns of Analog and Digital Circuits & Systems
Last updated: 2025 March 23
Note: This is the first in the 3-course series ECE 10ABC, with labs
Enrollment code: 12328
Prerequisite: Math 2AB or 3AB (see catalog for more)
Class meetings: TR 5:00-6:15 PM, Phelps 1425
Instructor: Behrooz Parhami, Distinguished Professor of ECE
Instructor's office hours: MW 11:15-11:45 AM, Phelps 1431
Teaching assistant: Farzan Rezaei, farzan at umail dot ucsb dot edu
TA's office hour: R 11:00-12:00, ECE Student Office Trailer
Course announcements: Listed in reverse chronological order
Course calendar: Schedule of lectures and links to lecture slides
Homework assignments: Seven assignments, each worth 5%
Exams: Two midterms (each worth 20%) and a final (worth 25%)
Lab work: Six labs (see the course calendar)
Policy on academic integrity: Please read very carefully
Grade stats: Grade range, mean, & median for each activity
Miscellaneous information: Motivation & catalog entry
Course Announcements
2025/03/23: The winter 2025 offering of ECE 10A is officially over and course grades have been reported to the Registrar. Wishing you all a fun and safe spring break!
2025/03/13: ECE 10A final exam will be held in our regular classroom from 7:30 to 9:30 PM, on W 3/19. The exam will be closed-book, with no notes (cheat sheet) allowed. The 5 problems have been designed so that to solve them, you don't need complicated formulas. You can work out the solutionS from scratch.
2025/03/06: HW7 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 3/14.
2025/02/26: HW6 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 3/07.
2025/02/20: HW5 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 2/28.
2025/02/13: Midterm 1 with solutions has been posted to the exams area below.
2025/02/12: HW4 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 2/21.
2025/01/30: HW3, which was a duplicate of HW2, has been replaced with the correct version.
2025/01/29: HW3 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 2/07.
2025/01/22: HW2 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 1/31.
2025/01/15: HW1 has been made available. It will be due by midnight on F 1/24.
2025/01/10: The TA's office hour has been posted above. Changes to homework and lab report submission procedures have been posted to the homework and lab areas below. HW1 will be posted by the end of next week and will be due on Friday 1/24. We will have no lab next week, but you must do the pre-lab assignment and ask any questions you may have of the TA.
2024/12/12: The course calendar is now final. This schedule will be followed precisely, so that you know which materials you missed in the event of an absence.
2024/12/05: The course schedule has been updated with lecture titles/dates, homework assignment issue & due dates, and labs.
2024/07/22: Welcome to the ECE 10A/AL course Web page for winter 2025. This is the first time I will be teaching this course and am now preparing for the challenge.
I will use the 2005 Morgan Kaufmann textbook, Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits, by Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey H. Lang.
I will gradually update this page as I learn/decide how to present the material. See you in 2025!
Course Calendar
Course lectures have been scheduled as follows. Professor Loai Salem, who has taught the course multiple times, including during fall 2024, has kindly agreed to provide us with his PDF lecture slides/notes, homework & exam samples, and lab descriptions. the posted lecture slides contain the needed material, whether or not text sections are cited in the schedule below.
Our textbook: Agrawal & Lang, Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits, 2005.
Special note: The lecture topics cited below match the material in the accompanying textbook sections, but they are distributed differently in the lecture slides. Please consult the first couple of slides in each lecture for the actual topics covered in that lecture.
Week 1: Basic circuit elements & terminology (No lab this week)
T 1/07, Lecture 1: Circuit elements, voltage, current, charge
R 1/09, Lecture 2 (Text 1.5): Resistance, power, energy
Week 2: Ohm's and Kirchhoff’s Laws + Pre-Lab, Equipment Introduction & Laboratory preparation (quiz)
T 1/14, Lecture 3: (Text 1.6, 1.7): Power balance, Ohm's Law, battery capacity
R 1/16, Lecture 4 (Text 2.1, 2.2): Terminology + Kirchhoff’s Laws
F 1/17, HW1-w2025 (posted on W 2025/01/15): Resistors and Ohm's Law
Week 3: Basic method of circuit analysis + Lab 1, Resistors and Ohm's Law
T 1/21, Lecture 5: (Text 2.3, 2.5): Basic Circuit Analysis + Circuit Analysis Examples
R 1/23, Lecture 6 (Text 2.4, 2.6): Dependent sources & voltage dividers
F 1/24, HW2-w2025 (posted on W 2025/01/22): Kirchhoff’s Voltage & Current Laws
Week 4: Equivlant resistance & node method + Lab 2, Resistive Networks & Series-Parallel Simplification
T 1/28, Lecture 7: (Text 3.1, 3.2, 3.3.1): Current dividers & equivlant resistance
R 1/30, Lecture 8 (Text 3.3): Node method of circuit analysis
F 1/31, HW3-w2025 (posted on W 2025/01/29): Series/Parallel Simplification
Week 5: Node voltage method (continued) + Lab 3, Resistive Networks and Voltage Dividers
T 2/04, Lecture 9: (Text 3.4): Node method with dependent sources and supernodes
R 2/06, Lecture 10 Node method with floating voltage sources
Week 6: Midterm + Source Transformations (No lab this week)
T 2/11, First Midterm, during class time (covers Lectures 1-9)
R 2/13, Lecture 11 Mesh current method
F 2/14, HW4-w2025 (posted on 2025/02/12): Node Method
Week 7: Comparison of methods & delta-to-wye tranformation + Lab 4, Digital Combinational Circuits
T 2/18, Lecture 12 (Text 5.2, 3.6): Comparing circuit-analysis methods
R 2/20, Lecture 13 (Text 3.6, 3.5): Delta-to-wye tranformation
F 2/21, HW5-w2025 (posted on 2025/02/20): Mesh Method
Week 8: Source transformations & nonlinear Elements + Lab 5, Digital/Analog Conversion
T 2/25, Lecture 14 (Text 4.1, 4.2): Source transformations
R 2/27, Lecture 15 (Text 16.1-16.3): Nonlinear resistors, rectifiers, diodes
F 2/28, HW6-w2025 (posted on 2025/02/26): Δ-Y & Source Transformations
Week 9: Midterm + Thevenin & Norton Theorems (No lab this week)
T 3/04, Second Midterm, during class time (covers Lectures 1-15)
R 3/06, Lecture 16 (Text 4.3, 4.4): Thevenin and Norton equivalent circuits
F 3/07, HW7-w2025 (posted on 2025/03/06): Thevenin’s & Norton’s Theorems and Superposition
Week 10: Sourceless networks & analysis of diode circuits + Lab 6, Analysis of Diode Circuits
T 3/11, Lecture 17 (Text 4.5): Sourceless networks & superposition theorem
R 3/13, Lecture 18 (Text 6.1-6.3): Semiconductor diode & small-signal analysis
W 3/19, Final exam, 7:30-9:30 PM in Phelps 1425 (covers Lectures 1-18)
T 3/25, Course grades due by midnight
Homework Assignments
- Homework submission will be via Gradescope, before midnight on the due date.
- Solutions will be made available on the course Web page and via Gradescope.
- Include your name, course title, and assignment number at the top of the first page.
- For handwritten-and-scanned solutions, make sure the result is sharp & legible.
- Although some cooperation is permitted, direct copying will have severe consequences.
Homework 1: Resistors and Ohm's Law (Due F 2025/01/24)
HW1-w2025 (posted on W 2025/01/15); HW1 sample.
Homework 2: Kirchhoff’s Voltage & Current Laws (Due F 2025/01/31)
HW2-w2025 (posted on W 2025/01/22); HW2 sample.
Homework 3: Series/Parallel Simplification (Due F 2025/02/07)
HW3-w2025 (posted on 2025/01/29); HW3 sample.
Homework 4: Node Method (Due F 2025/02/21)
HW4-w2025 (posted on 2025/02/12); HW4 sample.
Homework 5: Mesh Method (Due F 2025/02/28)
HW5-w2025 (posted on 2025/02/20); HW5 sample.
Homework 6: Δ-Y & Source Transformations (Due F 2025/03/07)
HW6-w2025 (posted on 2025/02/26); HW6 sample.
Homework 7: Thevenin’s & Norton’s Theorems and Superposition (Due F 2025/03/14)
HW7-w2025 (postrf on 2025/03/07); HW7 sample.
Exams
The following sample exams (from previous quarters) are meant to indicate the types and levels of problems, rather than the coverage (which is outlined in the course calendar). Students are responsible for all topics discussed in lecture notes and in explicitly-mentioned textbook sections. These sample exams have been graciously provided by Professor Loai Salem, who has taught this course multiple times.
Midterm 1: Sample 1; Sample 2; MT1-w2025 with solutions.
Midterm 2: Sample 1; Sample 2; MT2-w2025 with solutions.
Final: Sample; final-w2025 with solutions.
Lab work
ECE 10A/AL has six lab sessions, Lab 1 to Lab 6. Instructions for completing these labs and reporting your work via Gradescope are given in PDF documents accessible via links in the course calendar. A mandatory pre-lab (Lab 0) in Week 2 will familiarize you with the lab equipment and how they are used. You will have to buy some of the equipment, which are available from the ECE Shop, or you can choose to purchase them independently based on the given specs.
The following photos show the the lab room, 5162D Harold Frank Hall, with 20 workstations, close-up of the equipment on one of the workstations, and the ECE 10A instructor wearing his Ohm's-Law T-shirt.
Grade Statistics
Grades are in percent, unless otherwise noted.
HW1 grades: Range [87, 100], Mean = 96.2, Median = 96, SD = 4.0
HW2 grades: Range [45, 100], Mean = 85.9, Median = 86, SD = 13.7
HW3 grades: Range [68, 100], Mean = 92.8, Median = 99, SD = 9.8
HW4 grades: Range [80, 100], Mean = 96.9, Median = 100, SD = 5.7
HW5 grades: Range [78, 100], Mean = 94.8, Median = 96, SD = 6.4
HW6 grades: Range [79, 100], Mean = 94.8, Median = 100, SD = 7.4
HW7 grades: Range [80, 100], Mean = 97.3, Median = 100, SD = 6.1
Midterm 1 grades: Range = [20, 100], Mean = 71.3, Median = 81, SD = 27.0
Midterm 2 grades: Range = [20, 100], Mean = 83.5, Median = 100, SD = 25.1
Final exam grades: Range = [19, 100], Mean = 76.5, Median = 85, SD = 26.4
Course letter grade: Range = [C, A+], Mean = 3.32, Median = A–, SD = 0.76
Lab letter grade: Range = [B+, A], Mean = 3.32, Median = A, SD = 0.17
Miscellaneous Information
Motivation: In the realm of modern technology, electronic devices and circuits play a crucial role in powering everything from everyday gadgets to complex machinery. Understanding the fundamentals of these components can provide valuable insights into how various electronic systems operate and interact. This course explores the basics of electronics devices and circuits, their types, functions, and the significance of their design in today's technological landscape. Electronics means study of the flow of electrons in electrical circuits. The word Electronics comes from electron mechanics which means learning the way an electron behaves under different conditions of externally applied fields.
Catalog entry: ECE 10A. Foundations of Analog and Digital Circuits & Systems. (1) STAFF. 3 hour/week. ECE 10AL is the lab component for this course.
Prerequisite: Math 2A-B or 3A-B or Math 3AH-BH, and Math 4A or 4AI or 3C, all with a minimum grade of C; and, Math 4B or 4BI or 5A with a minimum grade of C (may be taken concurrently); Physics 3, 7B or 23 (may be taken concurrently); open only to electrical engineering and computer engineering majors.
Restrictions: Not open for credit for those who have received a C- or higher in ECE 2A.
The objective of the course is to establish the foundations of analog and digital circuits. The course will introduce the student to the power of abstraction, resistive networks, network analysis, nonlinear analysis and the digital abstraction.