ECE311

ECE 311 (Digital Signal Processing Lab) is a 1-credit-hour course that counts toward 1 of the 3 labs required for EEs as a supplemental software lab to ECE 310. The course is offered in the fall, spring, and summer terms.

Content Covered

Real-world applications of:

DTFT, DFT, DFT Spectral Analysis
Windowing, Convolution, LSI Systems, Difference Equations
Z-transforms, Pole-Zero Diagrams, BIBO Stability
Frequency Response of Discrete Time Systems
FIR and IIR Filter Design
DSP and Image Processing

ECE 311 begins with an overview of basic Python skills and DSP concepts, as the target of the course is to be able to apply the DSP concepts you will learn/have learned in ECE 310 to real-world problems via coding in Python. Throughout the rest of the semester, the course will follow closely behind the ECE310 agenda covering real-world applications of LSI/LTI systems, the Z-transform, Frequency Response and Sampling, the DFT and FFT, Filter Design, and finally Multirate Signal Processing.

Prerequisites

ECE310 (Credit or Concurrent)

ECE310 is the only official corequisite for this course. The bi-weekly labs and quizzes follow very closely with the scheduled content posted on the website for ECE310. All major topics from DSP will show up throughout the semester, so if you have taken ECE310 during a previous semester, make sure to brush up on the key concepts from the course and have your notes from the class handy.

When to Take it

If you are thinking about taking ECE310 as a technical elective, or you really enjoyed the course during a previous semester, this is a great 1-credit lab to add to your semester. Ideally, you’ll want to take ECE311 concurrently with ECE310, as the content covered in lectures will directly correlate to the topics you’ll address in the next lab.

Take this course to satisfy 1 of 3 lab requirements (not hardware) for EEs or if you like learning how you could apply DSP concepts outside of the classroom. Also, the expected workload in terms of time and effort needed to successfully complete this course is minimal, so if you need 1 more credit hour to flesh out your schedule, ECE311 is a good option for you.

Course Structure

During the semester, the course assigns 8 labs including the lab final due every other week. These assignments are generally straightforward and will contain 4-6 exercises with brief introductions of the ECE310 concept being incorporated at the beginning of each exercise. These labs will make up the vast majority of your grade throughout the semester, so make sure to remember to complete and submit your labs on time. Students have mentioned that each lab can take different amounts of time, though most will take no more than a few hours to complete. It is recommended that you go to office hours if you are confused while going through the labs, and feel free to reach out to your fellow classmates with any questions as ECE311 office hours are not nearly as frequent as non-lab courses.

The other part of your grade will be made up of the lab quizzes that assess the skills you applied in the lab that you completed over the previous two weeks. The quizzes are said to vary in difficulty quite a bit, however each quiz is graded with a total of ~15 points which will sum up to be a very small percentage of your overall grade in the course. The quizzes are given out every other week the day after your previous lab will be due and you are allotted 15 minutes to finish them. Often, the quiz will not require you to take the full 15 minutes; and after you have turned in your quiz and picked up the graded quiz from 2 weeks ago, you are free to leave the classroom.

Instructors

While Professor Minh Do is listed as the primary instructor for this course, the ECE311 TAs are the ones who will administer and grade the quizzes as well as grade the lab assignments for this course.

Course Tips

On the first day, introduce yourself to as many of your fellow classmates as you can so you can get their contact information. Don’t be afraid to reach out to them when you eventually get stuck on a specific exercise, because chances are that they struggled with the same one! Even if you feel confident in your results, double checking them with another student (or multiple other students) is a great way to increase your chances of getting a better grade on your labs.

When it comes to the bi-weekly quizzes, make sure that you remember the ECE310 concepts that you applied throughout the previous lab’s exercises. Students that struggle with remembering topics they learned a few weeks ago might want to do the lab assignment in the second week in order to be prepared for the quiz on that lab, rather than finishing it as soon as possible (Procrastinators for the win!). Just make sure to give yourself enough time in advance to finish and submit the lab before the due date :)

Life After

See ECE310 for future course recommendations.

Infamous Topics

The DFT and FFT: While ECE311 students need not worry about reading Butterfly Diagrams, applying the FFT with limited knowledge of algorithms can be difficult.
Sampling Rate Conversion: The ECE310 concept itself is hard to master, and the application of multirate signal processing using different types of interpolation takes a while to figure out.