Postgraduate Courses

CMOS process and design rules; MOS device electronics; CMOS circuit and logic circuit characterization and performance estimation; VLSI design and verification tools. Project work will be centered on industry standard tools.

Structured design styles, specification, synthesis and simulation using hardware descriptive language (HDL), structural chip design and system design, circuit design of system building blocks: arithmetic unit, memory systems, clocking and performance issues in system design, design-automation tools and their applications, introduction to testing.

This course introduces trends and design strategies for embedded systems. It will give a holistic view of embedded system design using smart phone as an example. It covers the basic hardware and software components involved in a complex embedded system. It also covers the design and use of System-on-a-chip (SoC) in embedded systems. The course will also discuss the design issues such as testability and power considerations. Hands-on experience will be provided.

Current sources, output stages, operational amplifiers, frequency response, feedback analysis, stability and compensation, slew rate, advanced integrated-circuit design techniques, analog VLSI building blocks.

Noise analysis, advanced op-amp design techniques, analog VLSI building blocks, multipliers, oscillators, mixers, phase-locked loops, A/D and D/A converters, passive filter design, frequency scaling, active filter design.

Review of MOSFET characteristics, device modeling for circuit simulation (SPICE models), the BSIM MOSFET models, other semiconductor models, circuit model parameter characterization, design guard-band and statistical modeling.

The course will cover power management circuits such as voltage references, linear voltage regulators, switched-inductor and switched-capacitor power converters; and power management systems for energy harvesting, RFID and bio-medical implants.

The course will cover radio-frequency circuit design techniques for wireless transceivers. At the end of the course, students should be familiar and acquire basic knowledge in transceiver architecture and integration, low-noise amplifiers, mixers, synthesizers, phase-locked loops, VCOs, and power amplifiers.

Designed for students with or without background in computer networks, this course covers the basic layer model for computer communications, TCP/IP and related protocols, local area networks, and advanced topics in unicast and multicast routing, QoS, mobile IP, and security.

This course provides a comprehensive coverage of digital communication theory and design. Emphasis placed on system goals and trade-offs. Review of signals and systems, probability and stochastic processes; optimal detection of signals in noise; basic information theory concepts; coding; basic and advanced digital modulation schemes; signaling through band-limited and wireless channels; spread-spectrum communications.

Systems and protocols for wireless communication networks; from cellular to wireless IP applications, multiple access protocols, advanced and current wireless networking technologies, wireless infrastructure for cellular and wireless networks, wireless network performance and capacity analysis, packet data access and protocols, QoS for wireless multimedia.

Telecommunication network structures, telephony, SS7, PDH and SDH transmission systems, network control and signaling, IN and network services, optical and DWDM networks, from ATM to new IP.

Overview of cellular structure and frequency reuse; mobile radio propagation and path loss models; statistical nature of radio channels; coding and time or frequency diversity; spread spectrum CDMA techniques and 3G Systems; OFDM and Wireless LAN standards; fast frequency hopping technology and Bluetooth.

Basic signal processing theory, image and video characteristics and processing, compression techniques, entropy coding, predictive coding, transform coding, vector quantization, subband coding, audio and speech processing, coding standards, real-time processing, watermarking, digital rights management.

This course discusses the recent development in social media, networks and systems. Analytical and hands-on techniques of social network analysis will be introduced to analyze some properties and phenomena in social networks. The impacts of social networking applications to telecom and media industries today will be discussed to foresee some future trends.

This course introduces the fundamentals of photonics, as well as provides a survey on the frontiers of optics and photonics technology. Fundamental topics include: geometric and wave optics, fiber optics, semiconductor light sources, and electro-optics. Selected special topics include: biophotonics, micro and nano optics, photonic integrated circuits and components, optical switching and RF photonics.

Discussions on various flat-panel display technologies. Emphasis will be placed on liquid crystal displays. Liquid crystal alignment and optics. Driving methods. Active matrix. Bistable displays. Plasma display panels. Inorganic and organic light emitting diodes physics and devices.

This course provides an overview to the fundamental concepts in both digital communication networks and digital communication systems. Physical layer concepts of signal space and digital modulation are highlighted including M-ary modulation, OFDM and MIMO. Higher layers are introduced including MAC layer protocols such as IEEE802.11, internet protocols, routing algorithms, transport layer including TCP and local area networks. Approaches to analyzing and formulating digital communication networks and systems using these concepts will also be included.

Design and implementation of computer architectures; analysis and comparison of different architectures; fundamental concepts including pipelining, instruction-level parallelism, memory hierarchies, input/output architectures, and multiprocessing; modern issues including networking architecture, storage area networking, and VLSI scaling.

Multi-dimensional signals and systems; Characteristics of image and video signals; visual perception; multi-dimensional sampling and transforms; image and video enhancement and restoration; image and video compression; coding standards; delivery of visual contents over networks.

Computer-based interpretation of signals; temporal, frequency, and wavelet analysis; fractal analysis; object segmentation; data fusion; pattern recognition; density estimation; feature selection and extraction; clustering; dynamic time warping; hidden Markov models; examples from biomedical signal processing and speech recognition.

This course introduces basic concepts, tools and techniques for modeling, analysis, and design of modern control systems. The course starts from the use of differential equations and Laplace transforms to model continuous time systems. Then, basic tools needed for analyzing the behavior of dynamical systems will be presented. Finally, techniques for controlling their behavior will be introduced.

This interdisciplinary class will combine a technical survey of emerging technologies and innovation and discuss the effects of these technologies in transforming the landscape of business and industry. By studying cutting-edge and emerging technologies that enable business processes and innovation and combining this exposure with hands-on business development projects for real-world technologies developed by HKUST and other technologists, this class builds the necessary experience and confidence to be able to effectively drive strategic business development for high-tech projects. The class will focus on a few major areas of innovation that will change the future landscape of the businesses, with notable guest lecturers providing business cases and industry perspective. Students will be required to form teams and work with technologists to create credible business development strategies as the final projects for the class.

Selected topics of current interest. May be repeated for credit if different topics are covered.

This course integrates the MSc program materials together by covering one or more selected topics in the following areas: network convergence; multimedia and content delivery protocols; broadband signaling, and new IP signaling standards; mobile network and applications; other topics.

Selected topics in analog and mixed-signal IC design drawn from disciplines such as RF/microwave IC design, integrated power electronics, imager design, micro-sensor design and micro-display design. Two to three selected topics will be discussed in depth that put emphasis on system level considerations as well as functional blocks design.

Selected topics in electronic and computer engineering studied under the supervision of a faculty member.

Independent project carried out under the supervision of a faculty member. This course may be run repeatedly for credit(s).