Department of Electronic Engineering 710 The Electronic Engineering Department was created in 1988 as a result of the Spanish University Reform Act. It includes groups in four schools of higher education (Industrial Engineering schools of Barcelona and Terrassa, Telecommunications school and Nautical Faculty of Barcelona) and in five schools of technical education (Technical colleges of Baix Llobregat, Terrassa, Barcelona, Manresa and Vilanova). Its activities include education, research and development in the fields related with Telecommunications, Industrial Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. The educational activities covers undergraduate studies at Higher and Technical education levels in eight Engineering Schools of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. The Department also has its own Ph.D. program which is the educational result of its R&D projects. Currently, there are more than 6000 students following undergraduate courses given by the Department and 90 (15 of them from overseas) following the Ph.D. Electronic Engineering program. The Electronic Engineering Department performs research in a wide range of fields, including Electronic and Medical Instrumentation, Design and Testing of Electronic Circuits and Systems, Semiconductor Devices and Power Electronics. All the research projects are supported by public institution grants and/or by private industry funds.
Education Undergraduate Studies The educational activities of the Department are summarized in the Tables 1 and 2 (Updated 01-12-99): Table 1. Educational activities at Higher Level Schools Curricula School of Industrial Engineering of Barcelona (ETSEIB) Industrial Engineering School of Industrial Engineering of Terrassa (ETSEIT) Industrial Engineering Automatic Control and Industrial Electronic School of Telecommunications Engineering of Barcelona (ETSETB) Telecommunications Electronic Engineering Faculty of Nautical of Barcelona (FNB) Merchant Seamanship Table 2. Educational activities at College Level Schools Curricula Technical College of Baix Llobregat (EUPBL) Diploma in Telecommunications Systems Technical College of Terrassa (EUETIT) Diploma in Industrial Engineering Diploma in Industrial Electronics Tecnical College of Vilanova i la Geltrú (EUPVG) Diploma in Electronic Systems Diploma in Industrial Electronics Technical College of Barcelona (EUPB) Diploma in Technical Architecture Technical College of Manresa (EUPM) Diploma in Electronic Systems Diploma in Industrial Electronics
Ph.D. Program At the graduate level, the Department offers its own Ph.D. program, consisting of a set of courses in which the students are introduced to research techniques in Electronic Engineering and are integrated in the research projects of the Department. These courses are listed below: Ph.D. Program Courses (Updated 1-12-99) 1. New trends in power electronics design Contact: J. Peracaula (e-mail: peracaula@eel.upc.es) 2. Power electronics devices and systems Contact: J. Peracaula (e-mail: peracaula@eel.upc.es) 3. Digital circuits and systems. Low power design Contact: J. Figueras (e-mail: figueras@eel.upc.es) 4. Electromagnetic compatibility and interferences Contact: J. Balcells (e-mail: balcells@eel.upc.es) 5. Programmable control systems Contact: J. L. Romeral (e-mail: romeral@eel.upc.es) 6. Introduction to CMOS microelectronics circuits design Contact: A. Rubio (e-mail: rubio@eel.upc.es) 7. Signal integrity in high speed digital circuits Contact: Fc. B. Moll (e-mail: moll@eel.upc.es) 8. Theory and technology of semiconductor devices Contact: J. Calderer (e-mail: calderer@eel.upc.es) 9. Analog circuits and systems. Application to electrical impedance measurements Contact: J. Rosell / R. Bragos (e-mail: jrosell@eel.upc.es, rbb@eel.upc.es) 10. Semiconductors Contact: Ll. Prat (e-mail: prat@eel.upc.es) 11. Heterojunction devices Contact: R. Alcubilla (e-mail: alcubilla@eel.upc.es) 12. Neural networks. Methodology and realization Contact: J. Cabestany (e-mail: cabestan@eel.upc.es) 13. Control techniques for the harmonic reduction of the converters and the improvement of its power facto Contact: R. Pindado (e-mail: pindado@eel.upc.es) 14. Signal analog processing Contact: R. Pallás 15. Noise and interferences in instrumentation Contact: R. Pallás ASIC Mounting and debugging facilities. 16. CMOS and BiCMOS analog microelectronic design: I Fundamentals Contact: J. Madrenas (e-mail: madrenas@eel.upc.es) 17. CMOS and BiCMOS analog microelectronic design: II Aplications Contact: J. Madrenas (e-mail: madrenas@eel.upc.es) 18. Supply distributed systems Contact: L. Garcia de Vicuña (e-mail: vicuna@eel.upc.es) 19. Microsystems technology Contact: L. Castañer (e-mail: castaner@eel.upc.es) 20. Stochastic modeling tools of fault tolerant systems Contact: J. A. Carrasco (e-mail: carrasco@eel.upc.es) 21. High-Level design and synthesis of electronic systems Contact: J. M. Moreno-Arostegui (e-mail: moreno@eel.upc.es) 22. DC/DC converters control, modeling and simulation Contact: J. L. Garcia de Vicuña (e-mail: vicuna@eel.upc.es) 23. Fuzzy control for power processing electronic systems Contact: F. Guinjoan (e-mail: guinjoan@eel.upc.es) 24. Programmable logic architectures and design techniques Contact: E. Lupon (e-mail: lupon@eel.upc.es) 25. Design methodology for AC power electronics converters Contact: J. Bordonau (e-mail: bordonau@eel.upc.es) 26. Assembly and connectivity concepts in electronics systems Contact: J. Cabestany (e-mail: cabestan@eel.upc.es) 27. Medical instrumentation design Contact: P. J.Riu (e.mail: priu@eel.upc.es)
Research The research activities of the Department are organized in 4 wide research areas. Each of these areas is devoted to specific research topics which are described below: Instrumentation and bioengineering research area Contact: Ramón Pallás-Areny Hardware and software design of measurement systems based on electrical impedance sensors, ultrasound and infrared radiation. Analog and digital signal processing applied to biomedical signals. Low-noise electronic design and electromagnetic compatibility Research Topics Biomedical instrumentation Contact: Ramón Pallás-Areny Hardware and software design of biomedical equipment for diagnostic, surgery and therapeutics. Multichannel systems for ECG and heart rate variability studies, real time signal processing, biotelemetry, noise and interference reduction. Electrical impedance tomography and spectroscopy Contact: Javier Rosell Ferrer (e-mail: jrosell@eel.upc.es) Development of new techniques and instruments to estimate properties of biological materials by measuring their electrical impedance. Applications in the medical and biological areas, such as the measurement of Body Fluid Shift during dialysis (or microgravity) and biomass measurements in bioreactors. Electromagnetic compatibility Contact: Pere Riu Costa (e-mail: priu@eel.upc.es) Analysis of electromagnetic compatibility problems in equipment, systems or electrical and electronics installations: emissions in cabling systems for communications, design of PCB for low emission and susceptibility, precompliance measurements. Sensors and interfaces Contact: Ramón Pallás-Areny Design and development of sensors based on simple and composite materials, and instrumentation electronics to interface them. Impedance spectroscopy and process tomography. Sensor Systems Contact: Miguel Garcia Hernandez (e-mail: mgarcia@eel.upc.es) Multiple primary sensors, signal conditioning, fusion and processing. Intelligent sensors. Main current activities: Infrared spectrophotometry and ultrasound based systems, for industrial, medical, and environmental applications. Views of the Instrumentation and Bioengineering Laboratory
Power electronics systems, modelling simulation and design research area Contact: Joan Peracaula (e-mail: peracaula@eel.upc.es) Modelling, simulation and design. CAD tools. Harmonics and EMI problems. Advanced control techniques. Resonant and high frequency converters. Interfaces between power electronic systems and power supply network. Research Topics Advanced control techniques for power electronics systems Contact: Joan Peracaula (e-mail: peracaula@eel.upc.es) Special emphasis on the control block for advanced power electronics systems, such as switching converters for power processing and inverters for induction machine speed and position regulation. Neural and fuzzy techniques, predictive, reference-model, adaptative and self-tuning models, sensorless vector control and DTC. Modelling, simulation and design of the power bloc to fulfil the complete system specifications in closed lop. High-frequency power converters Contact: José L. Garcia de Vicuña (e-mail: vicuna@eel.upc.es) Modelling, simulation and control of Power Converters. Microelectronic implementation of new control strategies. Implementation, characterization and measurement of converter applications. Industrial equipment: EMI and control techniques Contact Josep Balcells/Rafael Pindado (e-mail: balcells@eel.upc.es; pindado@eel.upc.es) Design of industrial and power electronics equipment. Analysis and measurement of disturbances in the supply systems. Harmonics, flicker, electromagnetic interferences and susceptibility problems diagnosis and reduction techniques. Interface of power electronics converters and the AC mains Contact: Josep Bordonau (e-mail: bordonau@eel.upc.es) The group works in the design of general-purpose electronic power converters connected to the AC mains. The design goals are: efficiency and size optimization, power factor improvement, EMI and harmonic reduction. Modeling, simulation and control of converters are also considered. Measuring and Signal Processing Bench for Power Electronics systems test and adjustment Nonlinear electronic circuits for signal and power processing Contact: Alberto Poveda (e-mail: poveda@eel.upc.es) Modeling, analysis and design of analog circuits for signal and power processing using nonlinear techniques. Power supply and communications systems design. Signal and power processing systems characterization Contact: Antonio Manuel (e-mail: antoni@eel.upc.es) Automatic measurement systems based on Virtual Instrumentation (VI) concept are designed for frequency characterization in high noise presence. These virtual instruments can be used for a fast characterization of switching regulastors, where the agreement between the measured frequency response and theoretical predictions are used in the modelling and design of switching regulators. Design and application of signals for system identification in the time and frequency domain. Nonlinear control. sliding mode control techniques
Design and test of electronic circuits and systems research area Contact: Joan Figueras Pamies (e-mail: figueras@eel.upc.es) New design methods for electronics are emerging at all levels of abstraction. From the low physical topological level to the high levels of behavioural description research is focused on the techniques and tools to perform efficiently the design process. In addition, since quality enhancement and reliability of the products is becoming an area of growing concern in the field of electronics, special attention is given to research on failure analysis and advanced test and fault CMOS Integrated Circuit incorporating a Built in Current Sensor. Research Topics Advanced hardware architectures and neural networks Contact: Joan Cabestany Moncusi (e-mail: cabestan@eel.upc.es) High performance architecture specification and design. main objectives are highly parallel fine grain multiprocessing structure realisation. Neural networks implementation based on VLSI and FPGA are also focused. Design of custom integrated circuits and systems Contact: Emili Lupon (e-mail: lupon@eel.upc.es) A good solution for the industrial implementation of electronic systems (medium and high sales volume) often implies the use of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). These circuits may be completely digital (Programmable Logic Devices as CPLDs and FPGAs, Gate Arrays, Standard Cells), but is more and more frequent to include also some analogue functions (standard cells). The research areas include the optimized design of ASICs and the system architecture adaptation to the function integration possibilities of the ASICs. Low power design and current test of CMOS circuits Contact: Joan Figueras Pamies (e-mail: figueras@eel.upc.es) The power consumed by electronic circuits and systems is becoming a growing concern for designers. Battery life, cooling, packaging costs and reliability problems of high consuming electronics are critical criteria in the design space. In addition, the current consumption can be used as an efficient indicator of a large class of defects in CMOS technologies and hence an emerging test technique uses the quiescent current to test electronic circuits. Reliability and fault-tolerance in electronic systems Contact: Juan Antonio Carrasco Lopez/Eduardo Navarro Gonzalez (e-mail: carrasco@eel.upc.es; navarro@eel.upc.es) Methods and techniques for the design, prediction and validation of reliable and fault-tolerant electronic systems. current activity areas: reliability engineering, advanced model construction and solution techniques, and fault-tolerant systems design. Automatic Test Equipment with enhanced test features. VLSI design of high performance circuits Contact: Antonio Rubio Sola (e-mail: rubio@eel.upc.es) The trend of electronic technology is oriented to the integration of circuits with complex tradeoffs as high speed, low noise, low power, high testability and reliability. The investigation of how these until now considered second order effects (noise, leakage, consumption, temperature) will affect the VLSI design of future circuits is the goal of the research.
Semiconductor devices research area Contact: Luis Castañer Muñoz (e-mail: castaner@eel.upc.es) Theory, technology and modeling of semiconductor devices: bipolar and heterojunction, with main interest in bipolar transistors, thin film transistors, solar cells. Technology of semiconductor materials for these devices. Microelectromechanical systems, including actuators based on pull-in, resonators, optical devices and flow sensors based on hot-point principle. Research Topics Amorphous alloys for high performance devices Contact: Ramón Alcubilla González (e-mail: alcubilla@eel.upc.es) Three main topics are adressed: use of amorphous SIC as large gap emitter material in Silicon HBT, fabrication of TFT s using Hot Wire CVD microcrystalline Silicon deposited at temperatures as low as 125ºC compatibles with low cost substrates and large area applications and finally low cost solar cells. Two different approaches are followed in solar cell development, on one hand amorphous on crystalline heterojunctions and on the other hand, through cooperation with other research groups, investigate the use of HWCVD material for thin film solar cells. Electronic materials technology Contact: Josep Calderer Cardona (e-mail: calderer@eel.upc.es) Study of properties and obtention process of materials used in electronic devices fabrication, with emphasis on Silicon Technology. Device fabrication facilities. Microsystems Contact: Luis Castañer Muñoz (e-mail: castaner@eel.upc.es) Microelectromechanical actuators based on pull-in, Resonators, Bipolar devices for thermal and optical sensors. Application areas in electronic noses, power-by light devices, microrelays and flowmetering. Photovoltaic solar energy Contact: Luis Castañer Muñoz (e-mail: castaner@eel.upc.es) Theory and technology of crystalline silicon based solar cells. Photovoltaic engineering: simulation, modeling and monitoring of PV systems. Advanced control electronics for load management. Simulation and modelling of semiconductor devices Contact: Lluis Prat Viñas (e-mail: prat@eel.upc.es) The aim of this research group is to develop analytical and numerical models of advanced semiconductor devices. These models are applied to study new structures, such as high efficiency solar cells and heterojunction bipolar transistors, where the conventional models are not valid. Presently, special attention is put on device simulation based on Monte Carlo modelling. Solar Simulator and photovoltaic measurements set-up.
Research main laboratories and equipment The research activities are developed in the Research Laboratories of the Department. the most significant are: Semiconductor Technology Laboratory Power Electronics Systems Laboratory Electronic Systems Design and Test Laboratory VLSI Design and CAD Laboratory Instrumentation and Bioengineering Laboratory EMC Laboratory Sensing Systems Laboratory Photovoltaic Systems Laboratory Staff (Updated 1-12-99) The Department has 78 senior lecturers, 27 full-time associate lecturers, and 39 part-time associate lecturers. There are also 16 grant holders. The administrative staff is composed by 6 full-time employees and 16 service staff. These laboratories include the following specific equipment Automatic Test Equipment. Analog (from µhz to GHz) and Digital Temperature-controlled probe station for not-encapsulated circuits and devices. Silicon technology equipment: photolithography, diffusion, sputtering and film deposition Solar simulator. Photovoltaic solar cells calibrator. Electrical impedance analyzers and standards Development systems for more than 8 different microprocessors and microcontrollers EMC analysis and testing. Conducted, radiated and susceptibility measurements Computing resources Local Area Network with access to mainframes such as Cray YMP-2E and Convex C3480, workstations and PCs. A Unix cluster with SUN (SPARCS10, 20 and ultra SPARCS 1,5,10) Acces to UPC Network by a Fore Router A LAN of PCs and Macintosh with Windows NT servers VLSI and CAD Laboratory For further information contact Departament d Enginyeria Electrònica - UPC C. Jordi Girona, 1-3. Edifici C4. Campus Nord 08034 Barcelona Tel.: 34 93 401 56 56 e-mail: dee@eel.upc.es Fax: 34 93 401 67 56 http//petrus.upc.es SIIP, 2000 (5130)