Date: 27/02/2011

Analog IC design kit from TI for Indian EE students

There are many complaints that Indian electronic engineers lack analog circuits knowledge. The analog semiconductor area requires more hands on experience to really understand the concept. TI with a rich analog IC product portfolio has realized this and has made available an analog design kit supported with written guide.

The lab course designed by Analog engineers of TI provides students an exposure to analog and mixed-signal processing. This course can be adapted for an undergraduate or a postgraduate curriculum. As part of this course, students will learn to build analog systems using analog ICs and study their macro models, characteristics, benefits and limitations so that the right IC can be selected to optimize system-level parameters. You can guess TI would focus more on using its products but still this kit is worth due to no such similar not available in the market.

The Analog System Lab course comprises of 10 experiments, which can be carried out either individually or by groups of two or three students. The experiments are conducted in two phases. In the first phase, two basic analog building blocks are introduced, namely, Operational Amplifiers and Analog Multipliers. In the second phase, students learn how larger analog systems such as integrators, differentiators, filters, function generators, VCO, PLL, DC-DC convertors and regulators can be constructed using the basic building blocks. The kit comes with a lab manual written by Dr. K. Radkhakrishna Rao and Dr. C.P. Ravikumar of TI India and published by Wiley India. Each experiment comprises of a comprehensive theoretical background, reference to literature, the specification of the design experiment, measurements to be taken, and the report formats required to be submitted at the end of the experiment.

"This is the first educational product from Texas Instruments, India. We are emphasizing on system-level design using ICs and recommending that circuit-level design be taught at a later stage. This is a fundamentally different way of teaching Analog Design. The product has already attracted wide attention from Indian Universities as well as several European Universities and Universities from South Asia. Our plan is to establish several TI Analog Labs this year to underline the importance of Analog System Design." says Dr. C.P. Ravikumar, Technical Director, University Relations, Texas Instruments India.