Electrical Engineering 16B — Designing Information Devices and Systems II (4 Units)

Course Overview

Summary

EECS 16B is the second part in the introductory electrical engineering series. The course provides a continuation of the material learned in EECS 16A, with an applications based focus. Students refine their circuit design and linear algebra skills from EECS 16A, while continuing to learn further about control theory, signal analysis, and differential equations.

Prerequisites

  • EECS 16A

Topics Covered

  • Differential Equations
  • Inductors
  • Phasors, Bode Plots
  • Elementary Analog Filters
  • Basic Digital Circuits and Transistors
  • Introductory Control Theory, Controllability, Stability
  • Linearization
  • Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) & Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
  • Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)
  • Sampling’

    No Longer Covered

  • Boolean Algebra

Workload

Course Work

  • 1 homework assignment per week
  • 1 three hour Lab session each week
  • 2 discussion sections each week
  • 2 midterms
  • 1 final exam
  • 1 final project conducted in lab

Time Commitment

This course has time commitment caparable, or slightly greater than, 16A, with 3 hours of lecture, 2 hours of discussion, 3 hours of lab, and a homework set each week. Labs in 16B are more involved than those in 16A. Expect each homework set to take approximately 6-8 hours each.

Choosing the Course

When to take

This course is intended for second semester freshmen who have taken EECS 16A, or an equivalent course. Some professors recommend taking it after CS 70, however that is not a requirement, nor proclaimed by all professors.

What's next?

After taking this course, students have the ability to take most of the upper division electrical engineering courses, in whichever sub field that they find interesting. This opens the door to a wide range of material. Two major subfields to choose from are circuits (EE105), and signals (EE120). Some graduate courses, such as EE219A, are accessible immediately after taking EE16B.

Usefulness for Research or Internships

Knowledge gained from this course will generally allow a student to understand circuits and signals to a high degree, as well as giving them the problem solving and mathematics ability to solve some difficult problems in that field. In particular the lab project provides decent insight into embedded systems (EECS 149) and can be useful for interviews. For research in any of the fields covered in this course (circuits, signals, controls), EE16B is a necessity. Internships generally will require a deeper level of understanding than EE16B gives, but EE16B opens the door for upper division courses which will give this knowledge.

Additional Comments/Tips

Don’t delay in taking this course! Although much of the material covered in this course gets covered in some form or another in many of the other courses, an understanding of this course is crucial for a deeper understanding of many other courses (including CS!).

Websites of Past Offerings:

Last edited: Summer 2020