ECE 4950/ECE 5960: Sensor Design
Professor El-Ghazaly created a new upper-level undergraduate/M.Eng. course on the design of sensor systems. The course focuses on the design of the transducers (i.e., sensors) and peripheral circuitry required to build a working sensor system that meets the needs of a given application. The course considers common specifications and tradeoffs, including sensitivity, specificity, dynamic range, resolution, power consumption, size, bandwidth, and cost.
Students who have taken ECE 3030 (Electromagnetics) and ECE 3150 (Microelectronics) are encouraged to join! The many fun labs and project are highlighted below.
Lab 1: Black Box Sensors
In this lab, students must identify the type of transducer (sensor) inside the black box and characterize its performance metrics through a series of measurements.
Lab 2: Stealth
In this lab, students initially try to steal past a pre-built PIR detector and determine how it works as well as its trade-offs. The PIR detector and circuit is shown below.
Then, students construct their own intruder detection sensor systems, characterize them and compare the trade-offs.
Lab 3: Speedometer
In this lab, students first investigate a bicycle computer to determine how it calculates the speed of the bike. Then, they proceed to measure the required dimensions of the wheel and write up Arduino code to make their own sensor systems subsequently.
Then, students construct their own speedometers using a Reed sensor, Hall sensor, magnetoresistance sensor, and handmade fluxgate sensor.
Lab 4: Baking
In this lab, students begin by making their own thermocouple and temperature readout circuit.
Students then calibrate their “ovens” (aluminum enclosures on hot plates, where the control to the hot plate was bypassed to include a power relay that can be controlled by the Arduino).
Lab 5: Flow
In this lab, students first determine the gas flow rates achieved by three different pumps in the lab.
Students then build their flow sensors with a heater + thermocouple pair at one end and a thermocouple measuring ambient temperature at the other. They calibrate the flow rate by observing the cooling of the heater under each of the three flow rate cases. Finally, they can test their sensor by calculating the flow rate generated by moving the sensor through air manually.
Lab 6: Greenhouse Gases
In this lab, students determine the quantity of a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide in this case, emitted (from a SodaStream machine) using several techniques.
After all this hard work, the students get to make and enjoy a cup of Italian soda with their choice of flavored syrup!
Lab 7: Autonomous Vehicles
To understand the sensing required for autonomous vehicles to operate, students explore the various ranging systems in this lab.
Project (Fall 2023)
Over the course of the semester, students quantitatively design, build, and calibrate their own sensor systems to meet the specifications of a chosen application. The application requirements are given to the students at the start of the semester and then the competition begins!
