1. VT ECE 2204 (CRN 70346): Electronics-1: Revision 2
Course Syllabus
Summer II Weekdays 8:00-9:15am (Room: Durham 261)
I. ECE 2204 ELECTRONICS-I
Instructor: Elliott Mitchell-Colgan, Dept. of ECE, 423 Whittemore Hall
Email: emc2@vt.edu
Office Hours: Monday – Friday 9:15am – 10:30am and by appointment (e-mail at least 12 hours in
advance if possible). Location: Room 215 Whittemore.
Review Sessions: Not mandatory, Thursday 7:00pm – (8:00pm or so).
Prerequisites: ECE 2004 (C- or above). Co-requisite: ECE 2274
II. COURSE DESCRIPTION
Introduction to basic electronic devices including diodes, bipolar transistors, and field effect and their
operating principles. Analysis of electronic circuits operating under DC bias and switching conditions.
Application of devices in digital electronic circuits.
III. MAJOR MEASURABLE LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Having successfully completed this course, the student will be able to:
1. Describe the operating principles of electronic devices including diodes and transistors.
2. Analyze electronic circuits operating under dc bias conditions.
3. Analyze electronic circuits operating under switching conditions.
4. Describe basic digital logic families.
5. Design and analyze simple digital gates.
6. Use PSpice to model circuits containing transistors and other electronic devices.
IV. TEXTS AND SOFTWARE
Donald Neamen, Microelectronics Circuit Analysis and Design, 4th Ed., McGraw-Hill.
You can also download Pspice free from the site http://www.ece.vt.edu/ece3254/ . On the website,
perform a text search for “Download Pspice”.

2. V. COURSE OUTLINE
CONTENT
Review Kirchoff’s Voltage and Current Laws (KVL, KCL), Ohm’s law
Ch 1 Introduction to Diodes and Diode Circuits
Ch 2 Diode Circuit Application
Ch 5 Introduction to BJTs and BJT Circuits
Ch 3 Introduction to MOSFETs and MOSFET Circuits
Ch 16 MOSFET Digital Applications
Part 1 – Diodes: Week 1 and Week 2
Chapters 1 and 2.
Standard, Schottky, and Zener diodes I-V characteristics.
Diode circuits: Rectifiers, voltage reference circuits, clipper, clamper, and filters.
Part 2 – BJTs: Week 3 and Week 4
Chapter 5.
BJT: npn and pnp BJT I-V characteristics and modes of operation.
BJT circuits: Biasing in discrete circuits and Integrated Circuits (ICs).
Part 3 – MOSFETs: Week 5 and Week 6
Chapters 3 and 16.
MOSFET I-V characteristics and modes of operation and common source architectures.
MOSFET circuits: NMOS inverters, NOR gates, NAND Gates, CMOS inverters, NOR, NAND gates.
VI. COURSE MATERIALS
HOMEWORK
There will be 6 homework assignments, one per week. In total they are worth 20% of your grade. They
will be assigned on Monday on Scholar and due on Friday. They are designed to provide a foundation of
practice (without solutions) for the analysis portion of the weekly exams and cumulative final exam.
They are not designed to displace studying for the exam. Solutions to the homework assignments will
not be available before the test.
PROJECT
There will be 1 project worth 20% of your grade. This project will include the simulation of a simple
circuit in an industrial circuit analysis software called PSpice and a concise, informative report based on
your findings. The project will be assigned on day one, due the Monday August 11th. Details about the
project can be found on the project assignment sheet on Scholar.

3. EXAMS
There will be 6 midterm exams, one per week. There will also be a cumulative final exam on . The
midterm exams will total 40% of the grade, with the lowest exam score excluded from grading. The
cumulative final will count for 20% of the grade.
The exams will be conducted on Fridays during class, covering the material from Monday – Thursday of
the same week. It should be noted that there are ideas fundamental to several analyses (KVL, KCL,
Ohm’s Law, etc…) which will be tested repeatedly. Exams will last for 75 minutes (1 standard class
period) and usually contain between 4 and 7 problems. Thus, part of your preparation for the exam
should be ensuring that you can quickly analyze and design circuits.
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
There will be warm-up activities at the beginning of class and usually one or more in-class activity during
the class periods. These will help ensure that students are able to absorb the class material in class. They
are not meant to displace after-class practice. The in-class activities will not be graded, but one who
practices at home will be able to gain the most benefit from the in class activities.
TEXTBOOK
It will be important to student success to read the course textbook. Sometimes, this will mean skimming
the explanatory text, other times it will mean completing the example problems.
PRACTICE PROBLEMS AND REVIEW PAPERS
Another sort of course material is the supplemental problems and review that the instructor posts to
the Scholar website. These are designed to give more challenging problems than those in the book, and
should be somewhat helpful in further understanding the material presented in the textbook (and class).
VII. OTHER TOPICS
ATTENDANCE
Attendance is expected, but is not explicitly graded. However, it is the instructor’s opinion that
attendance will correlate heavily with earned grades because of the guided in-class activities and
differences in content and clarity of the lectures from the course textbook (having two explanations may
be helpful).
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
The Virginia Tech Honor Code establishes the standard for Academic Integrity in this course, and will be
strictly enforced. Discussion of class material with your classmates or the instructor is encouraged;
however, all submitted work (including tests, homework, in-class assignments, and the project), must
represent your own efforts. For more details on the relevant honor codes, consult the websites below:
Undergraduate Honor System, http://www.honorsystem.vt.edu/index.html
STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
We wish to make any accommodations needed by any student because of a disability. Please contact
the instructor during the first 2 days of class. Also, there are Services for Students with Disabilities.
Information can be found at http://www.ssd.vt.edu/ .