Electronics and circuits exam

Examiner: Dr. Xiaoshan Zhu, xzhu@unr.edu

Sample texts

The exam topics are covered in most texts for a first course in circuit analysis with active devices. Examples of suitable texts are:

  • Electronic Circuit Analysis and Design, 4th Edition, D.A. Neamen, McGraw-Hill, 2009.
  • R. Jaeger and N. Blalock, Microelectronic Circuit Design, 2ndEdition, McGraw-Hill, 2004

Exam rules

  1. The duration of the exam is three hours.
  2. The exam is closed book (a calculator can be used), and one page of equations is allowed.
  3. The student will be asked to solve 5~7 questions.

Exam topics

The exam questions will cover the following topics:

  1. Thevenin/Norton, KVL, KCL
  2. Semiconductor properties
  3. Diodes and diode circuits
  4. BJT and BJT circuits with emphasis on analog behavior (e.g., CE, CB, CC and their small signal circuits)
  5. MOSFET and MOSFET circuits with coverage of both amplifier design and analysis and CMOS digital circuit design and analysis (e.g. CS, CG, CD and their small signal circuits)
  6. Differential amplifiers, current sources and mirrors, and output stages
  7. Frequency response of active devices
  8. Feedback theory
  9. Operational amplifier and its applications (e.g. non-ideal parameters of Op-amp, bode plot of non-inverting or inverting operational amplifier, schmitt trigger, active filter, comparator)
  10. Fundamental of digital electronics (e.g. logic gates using BJT and CMOS)