Electronics and circuits exam

Examiner: Professor 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
• Microelectronic Circuit Design, 2ndEdition, R. Jaeger and N. Blalock, McGraw-Hill, 2004

Exam rules: 

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

Exam topics: The exam questions will cover the following topics:

• Thevenin/Norton, KVL, KCL
• Semiconductor properties
• Diodes and diode circuits
• BJT and BJT circuits with emphasis on analog behavior (e.g., CE, CB, CC and their small signal circuits)
• 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)
• Differential amplifiers, current sources and mirrors, and output stages
• Frequency response of active devices
• Feedback theory
• 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)
• Fundamental of digital electronics (e.g. logic gates using BJT and CMOS)