Introduction to EE 229

Welcome to EE 229!

Since we are offering this class remotely, there will be many changes to our normal course delivery:

1. There will be no face-to-face lecture classes. All the material will be made available via this site.
2. There will be more emphasis on student-centric activities, e.g. analysis, design, and simulations. Thus, you will be mostly "learning by doing". In this context, we will set aside an hour every week for consultations and questions via video-conferencing.
3. Grades will be based on the submitted deliverables from the activities. Though we will not be very strict regarding the deadlines, it is a good idea to keep up with the class schedule and avoid cramming later in the semester.

Please remember that this semester is very different from those before, and please make sure you inform me if you have any issues or difficulties regarding the class. Also, keep in mind that you will need to pay a bit more attention to your time management as it will play a critical role during the course of the semester.

Let's get started!

An Overview

Figure 1: A generic RF transceiver.

The objective of an RF transceiver is to transmit and receive information. To perform this task, however, requires concepts, technologies, and interactions from and among many fields, and some of these fields are not directly related to IC design. The task itself is relatively complex, with trade-offs encompassing various domains and levels of abstractions. However, we can identify some of the typical functional blocks needed (1) to transmit data wirelessly, and (2) to receive signals coming in from a remote location, as seen in the generic RF transceiver block diagram in Fig. 1.