Year 3 Spring EE Modules
Spring Term
ELEC96001 – Advanced Electronic Devices (Fobelets)
ELEC96002 – Advanced Signal Processing (Mandic)
The content is interesting for those who want to learn about real-world signal processing. However, the lecturer is not great at explaining and rarely bothers to answer questions over email or on Teams, which is so disappointing given the module was taught remotely. The GTA support is also bad because they often seem confused with the content themselves or will give vague or contradictory answers. Being passionate about signal processing and asking higher years who took the module to compare plots is essential to doing well here. The CW is a 40 page report based on a long set of MATLAB exercises. You should start working on it ASAP and put in enough hours per week so you don’t end up scrambling in the end (2020/2021).
The lecturer and lectures are poor for this. The notes are kind of useful and the coursework is really time consuming. Having said that this was one of my favourite courses because it is really interesting content. If you find a friend that did it the year before it will save your life because you can check your plots against theirs to see if you have gone down the complete wrong route which is very easy to do. CW is one 42 page report with sets of Matlab exercises. – Hamish, 2019/20
Horrible, don't take. It was mostly about using Matlab and supposed to be learning how to estimate signals in the presence of noise? The only assessed thing is this 40+page report due at the end of the mod to answer a few questions using Matlab. Didn't feel like I learnt much, most of the lectures felt not very connected and disjoint, the lecturer was not supportive at all and don't realy answer questions, GTA support was sorely lacking as well. – ykw, 2019/20
Tough tough tough. But very interesting – Kunal, 2019/20
Long coursework, that's it – Tarik, 201
ELEC96011 – Digital System Design (Bouganis)
Very very difficult and time consuming. Lots of team work and extra lab time required. Hardware acts up sometimes (almost always actually), so it is hard to pinpoint the problems with your code. – 2019/20
Pretty good, really enjoyed the lectures. Labs could have done with more GTAs as the software can be v
Only course in 3rd year which teaches Verilog, so if you want to learn hardware design take it. Software requires a lot of patience as its slow and can break for no reason. Generally kinda fun. - 2019/20
Well taught, hard but rewarding coursework – Tarik, 2019/20
Really good module for developing an understanding of digital systems. It really helped to see just how much of a difference different design techniques made. The lectures were nice but seemed disconnected to the coursework imo. The coursework is time-consuming, and you need to be really on top of it as there will be loads of errors/bugs but as others have said, it’s very rewarding. HH, 2020/21
ELEC96018 – Embedded Systems (Stott)
Not that difficult I think. Get a good group that can work well with. Not that theoretical in my opinion. Veryyyy slow feedback. Slides weren’t that interesting tbh. JZ, 2020/21
Very good module if you're a creative person, very good learning experience in programming – 2019/20
Highly enjoyable and really not very much work. Getting a good group can do bits massively. Would highly recommend doing if you are unsure what to pick as a CW module. – Hamish, 2019/20
Interesting and broad - though not very practical – 2019/20
Pretty bad. Slides were boring, both CWs felt like a mishmash of random stuff that had no relevance to anything. Feedback took ages – Yusuf, 2019/20
Nothing really to do with embedded systems, first task is pretty much make a website . But it's a btec group project so it's fun if you have friends. - 2019/20
Fun module. Second bit is annoying, hardware is often faulty. – Kunal, 2019/20
One of my favorite modules! You get to be creative and to work with your friends. If you have some other knowledge about websites, electronics, ML, you can show off and apply it on the projects. Important to pick a good team as it can really reduce your workload when it’s a good one. Stott is also a great lecturer and you can ask questions during labs, GTA will (generally) help –2020/21 MG
ELEC96019 – High Level Programming (Clarke)
Honestly I really enjoyed this module. Take it if you want to be a better programmer. You get out what you put in. F# is actually a really nice language to write in. Be aware that it is taught by Tom Clarke – you’ll know whether you like him or not from first year I reckon. Make sure you pick a good group – you'll be working a lot with your group and (unless it changes) you only pick half of the group. Also make sure you learn how to use Git beforehand! - JZ, 2020/21
Some people say this module is tough. I honestly don’t think it is once you understand what functional programming is all about - so try to do that. F# is a very productive language to work with – it’s easy to debug, the code looks beautiful and it’s...well, high level. In comparison, I find C++ rather stressful as you need to keep track of the variables you’ve declared...F# is just functions! As JZ mentions, it can improve your ability as a programmer. I recommend checking the module out to see if it is for you. – Aaman, 2020-21
Functional programming moves basic programming ideas to the compiler. Overheads such as creating looping iterators are removed, so you don’t need (for int i=0; …..) anymore and can write more high-level, concise code. It is a great skill to have and even Python supports it. If you can follow the worksheets that Tom Clarke has prepared you are definitely set to ace the coursework. Coursework’s workload may not be evenly distributed among yours team so make sure you voice out your concerns to the GTA’s or to Tom Clarke as early as possible if such situation is happening
Overall a very good learning experience, beware that Dr Tom Clarke is bad at explaining things sometimes – 2019/20
Unreasonable work load and feedback took ages. Very interesting and would recommend doing however if you're willing to take control of it yourself – Yusuf, 2019/20
Worth taking if you're interested in functional programming. Coursework is tough but interesting. Clarke is kind of a melt but learning functional programming is fun – 2019/20
ELEC96020 – Instrumentation (Papavassiliou)
Easy grades – 2019/20
Really good module overall that touches the tip of the iceberg of the art of instrumentation. The content is good but what really makes this module is Papavassiliou. He is a super helpful lecturer and provides a ton of practical engineering advice. The coursework seemed very weird to start off with and admittingly it took a while to fully understand what was required. Since it was remote, everything was done in LTSpice so it was a good way to learn how to use it. Also, the GTAs were fantastic too. They knew what they were talking about and provided a very student-esque approach/outlook to problems. Would recommend to anyone interested in instrumentation / biomedical / analogue. - HH, 2020/21
ELEC96027 – Power Electronics (Mitcheson)
I was pretty disappointed with this module in the end. The lectures are not useful at all because the CW is to make a buck/boost converter which is relearned in week 2/3. This means you have no motivation to learn anything else from this course and so becomes a pointless choice. The GTA is really good so make use of him and the making of a PCB can be interesting but in general I wouldn’t do this if I had the choice again. – Hamish, 2019/20
ELEC96028 – Real-Time Digital Signal Processing (Junyent-Ferré)
Module was refurbished by 180 degrees from the ykw 19/20 commend below (‘: Short answer: don’t pick it unless there is a guarantee that the module was fixed. Nothing was done in C or assembly, only simulink. The lectures are very insightful about real-time DSP, yet most of the things were really improvised “on-the-go" style, especially that no solution was practically provided or possible for the
largest coursework piece. Also no GTAs, so careful about support! (Although Adria is super kind and helpful) 20-21
Adria changed the content of the module significantly from 19/20, as everything was done with an under-powered TI board on Simulink. The lecturers give you some insight into practical DSP, but unless you took autumn-term DSP, you will not really know why you’re doing what you're doing. There was also no GTA support, so do try to confirm with him that he will actually have GTAs this year. On the bright side, Adria is supportive and willing to help students out. He was generous with how much time he devoted to support and answers emails quickly (2020/2021).
Quite a fun module! Learnt about how to code in C and assembly and making sure your code is optimised enough so that everything runs in real-time, and we also do a lot of signals stuff like filtering and FFT. The final project was quite fun, it was trying to write code to detect certain specific sounds. And Dr Adria is really supportive and helpful as well! And labs are also assessed and there;s a lot of past projects on github which is very good for reference. In general the labs are very useful for learning imo – ykw, 2019/20
ELEC96032 – Managing Engineering Projects (Perea)
Scoring module! – 2019/20
ELEC96033 – Deep Learning (Mikolajczyk, Ciliberto)
This module is worth it if you want to find out about deep learning and how neural networks can be applied. I found the lectures to be nice, the GTAs were helpful and knowledgeable. However, I really enjoyed the Google Colab notebooks (in which you work with Keras models hands on). They really stimulate learning. Also...Colab Pro allows you to use Google Colab for longer time...but it’s perfectly possible to use the vanilla non-pro version if you manage your time well. In fact I kind of left tasks till the business end of term and I still got along fine without Pro. - Aaman, 2020-21
A self learning module, lecture is kind of useless, also the guideline in writing report is weird – 2019/20
Well structured, highly recommend! Useful for job apps as well. – 2019/20
The lectures are very mathematical and you literally don’t need any of it – Kunal, 2019/20
Just use the Collab notebook, you can even get a headstart by cloning the previous year and doing most of the tasks+ report before they release it. TBF if you know a little about ML it’s a good way to get a good mark for people who are good at working autonomously – MG 2020/21