Year 4 Autumn EE Modules

Autumn Term

ELEC97004 – Advanced Communication Theory

ELEC97013 – Coding Theory

Pretty decent by the standards of modules – 19/20

This course has a lot of content and rapidly introduces quite a few new mathematical concepts. It is very interesting (especially the parts covering encryption), but very heavy. The exams have always been very similar but require a lot of memorization if the exam is non-open book. – 19/20

ELEC97021 – Digital Image Processing

A really good module. You may doubt Tania after 2nd year linear systems, but when teaching a subject she's actually interested in she's very engaging and a good lecturer. I wish there was a practical component to this module to put into practice the techniques talked about. The exam is very doable, and has remained fairly consistent over the last few years (i.e. past papers are your friend). – 19/20

ELEC97045 – HVDC Technology and Control

Good module, very enjoyable and well explained. The second part of the course with the reverse lectures and the class were a great way to understand the lectures from week to week. – Clementine Biet, 2019/20

ELEC97046 – Human-Centered Robotics

This is a cool module where you learn about actual real life applications of EEE but is relatively unstructured. The lectures are more for interest rather than essential for the coursework. The coursework itself is fun as you have free rein to produce pretty much whatever you want but it can often be hard to score high in this module, and the large group sizes also often make this quite difficult. – 19/20

A really great course, Prof Demiris gives you the freedom (and budget) to do whatever you want. Be warned, you might find this course too enjoyable and spend too much time on it. – 19/20

Depends on your group, overall a good choice of module with a lot of freedom to do something interesting, support and equipment very accessible if you ask for it – 19/20

Interesting module that requires a good group dynamic and planning. The lectures and the coursework are a bit disconnected but the Prof and the Robotics lab are helpful to guide the project. – Clementine Biet, 2019/20

Easily one of the best modules in EEE. Yiannis designed the module to give students an excuse to build cool robots, and supplies you with lots of equipment like LIDARs, depth cameras and robot arms. You work in a group of 6 or so, and build a robot that interacts with humans in some way to test a hypothesis you come up with. That is your only restriction, everything else is up to you. It's a student-driven module, so don't expect Yiannis to move your project forward. If you are in a motivated group, it is an amazing coursework with lots of practical experience. – 19/20

Very fun, quite different from any other module in my opinion. The amount of technical skills involved depends a lot on the robot you choose to implement, but you will definitely gain knowledge in hypothesis testing and how to conduct a scientific experiment. Prof. Demiris and his GTAs are super helpful throughout. – Emilie d’Olne, 2019/20

ELEC97058 – Modelling and Control of Multi-Body Mechanical Systems

ELEC97062 – Optimisation

A very well taught introduction to optimisation. Quite maths heavy, but not too bad as everything is explained well. A full textbook along with problems is given. – 19/20

Very interesting, especially if you like maths. – Emilie d’Olne, 2019/20

good lectures; the exam does not correlate with the book much (the book is much harder) – 19/20

ELEC97068 – Power System Economics

Interesting module that highlights the less-technical side of EEE. The lecturer is a bit strict and often deliberately records the lectures without sound to make you attend them in real time (idk how this will change with covid) but the content is well taught. The content and thus by extension the coursework and exam were really do-able so it's easy to do well and get a high score in this module. – 19/20

Great if you enjoy economics, does not require technical knowledge of power systems (he goes through anything you may need to know for the module), textbook is very helpful and well-written. – 19/20

ELEC97072 – Probability and Stochastic Processes

Good refresher on second year stats, but does not cover many new concepts (except in the last couple of lectures). – Emilie d’Olne, 2019/20

just reads the slides in the lecture; contents have many repetitions with the contents covered in previous years (about 5-6 chapters??) – 19/20

ELEC97081 – Stability and Control of Non-Linear Systems

ELEC97085 – Systems Identification and Learning

ELEC97088 – Topics in Large Dimensional Data Processing

If you hate maths, dodge this. Dai goes through content very quickly and there is lots of notation given with little explanation. There is a presentation worth 25% and he is generous with marks there, but otherwise unless you really understand the content, the exam is a nightmare. Dai provides no supporting material for his lectures, like problem sheets, claiming that you can ace his exam purely with his slides. – 19/20

ELEC97105 – Self-Organising Multi-Agent Systems

This is a really weird module. Content is about how to form rules and behaviours within a system of agents to make it sustainable, which is fun. Pitt is an engaging lecturer, though will quite often promote his own political views within a lecture. The coursework is where it gets weird. You get tasked to create a simulation based on some brief. However for us the group size was 18 (the entire module), which is a hilarious time. If you manage to sort out management and decide on a framework quickly, it's all bueno. But working in a group that big, while a useful experience, is painful as cliques get formed and there is usually some terrible group politics to navigate to get anything done. One other fun point is that we got to decide how the marks were awarded within the group. Because we felt that giving everyone the same mark based on the quality of the end simulation and investigation was unfair (some people could get a good mark while contributing very little), we set up our own peer assessment scheme and decided how much of the module the peer assessment was worth. – 19/20

ELEC97106 – Hardware and Software Verification

Badly run and badly taught. Balance of CW between two halves is atrocious, marks were given for things not that important. Because I'm still bitter you get details: the hardware half assigned most if its marks to verifying a hardware system, which is good. Except we weren't given a system and told to verify it, we had to design a system to meet a spec (for close to zero marks), and then verify it. – 19/20

This course feels like it could be split in two. The software side definitely had a feeling of "you get it or you don't", and Dafny is not fun to use. Prof Harrod's teaching didn't really give a great overview of the subject and was closer to teaching system verilog rather than techniques for writing hardware testbenches. However this was the first year that the course has run, and I imagine it will improve substantially based on feedback. – 19/20

The module is split into two halves: hardware with Harrod and software with Wickerson. The hardware content is interesting, but Harrod has the incredible ability to put anyone to sleep when lecturing. The coursework for hardware is to design a hardware module and build a testbench for it, which is great but takes a lot of time. The software content is the biggest waste of time. You'd think it'd be about unit tests, integration tests and the like, but instead it's about two languages called Isabelle and Dafny. These two languages are designed for proving algorithms work, but have so little useful documentation and online help that the software coursework is a huge pain up the backside. The content is completely useless (for reference the Dafny subreddit has 1 post and 8 subscribers, and the Isabelle subreddit was taken over by the Animal Crossing character for 2 years). The total coursework for this module is a lot, and unless Wickerson reworks the software side, do something else. – 19/20

ELEC97307 – Full-Custom Integrated Circuit Design

Very interesting module however the work load is enormous will impact your FYP and other modules. The coursework will probably be due during the Christmas break. The knowledge learnt versus the amount of work is not worth it if you are not seeking a career in full-custom design – Clementine Biet, 2019/20