- At home, electrical power provides a convenient and clean source of heat and light and runs domestic appliances; electronics and telecommunications are fundamental to the operation of TV, radio and other recreational equipment.

- For industry, electrical power provides heat and mechanical energy while electronics, communications and signal processing allow the control and automation of most manufacturing processes.

- For Commerce, business and government have to deal with an increasing flow of information in which the application of electronics and communications techniques has become dominant.

- In hospitals, electronics and signal processing are fundamental to the operation of modern medical equipment.

- The entertainment field, electronics, telecommunications and signal processing dominate the music industry, multimedia and the internet, satellite TV and mobile telephones.

This well-established degree provides an integrated approach to engineering, linking academic rigour, engineering applications, and marketing and business skills to prepare graduates for a range of exciting careers.

Engineering is a problem-solving business and engineers use their skills to produce practical and beneficial solutions. This course provides a broad-based engineering education with an emphasis on the practical application of theory to solve real engineering problems.
The structure of the course allows for final year specialisation delivered in Singapore.

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About Northumbria University

Northumbria University is a large metropolitan university, first established as a polytechnic in 1969 and inaugurated as a university on 1 September 1992. The largely modularised curriculum is delivered to almost 22,000 students about 15,000 of who are full-time. The remainder study on a wide range of part-time and short courses.

History
Newcastle Polytechnic was formed in 1969 from the amalgamation of three regional colleges, Rutherford College of Technology, the College of Art & Industrial Design, and the Municipal College of Commerce. These colleges themselves had origins, which were deeply rooted, in the region. The practical and vocational training needs of local industry had stimulated the development of relevant post-school education as far back as the nineteenth century.

Building on these firm foundations, the Polytechnic became one of the leading institutions of its type in the UK. It became a major centre for the initial training of teachers with the incorporation of the City College of Education in 1974, and subsequently the Northern Counties College of Education in 1976.

In 1976 the Polytechnic, which already offered nurse training, began occupational therapy and physiotherapy training. In 1995 the incorporation of the Bede, Newcastle and Northumbria College of Health Studies was transferred into the University.

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Newcastle City Centre

The City Centre site houses the administrative centre of the University, the main Library, the Students' Union Centre and the Student Services Centre as well as the bulk of teaching accommodation.

The city centre campus is the location for an exciting research project, funded with grants from the European community and from industry. The entire south-facing facade of the Northumberland Building has been clad with solar panels. The panels are intended to provide a significant proportion of the building's power needs. This is the northern-most experiment of its kind in Europe, looking into potential alternative power sources for city centres.

The University has contributed considerably to the regeneration of Newcastle's city centre, having refurbished a variety of old buildings adjacent to, or close to its city campus. These include student accommodation at Garth Heads, Art Conservation housed in Burt Hall, and the state-of-the-art IT and teaching facilities in the Trinity Building (a deconsecrated church) and The Drill Hall. The Law School is housed in the old Dental Hospital, a 19th century building now renamed Sutherland Building.

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School of Engineering & Technology at Northumbria

The School of Engineering & Technology offers a wide range of programmes, from HND to postgraduate level, covering disciplines in Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Systems, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Applied Physics and Optoelectronics. The courses provide a strong academic base with a clear vocational emphasis, and benefit directly from the wide range of research and consultancy activities undertaken by staff.

The School prides itself on the quality of its courses and the support it provides for its students, as recognised by "excellent" ratings in recent teaching quality assessments.

The School of Engineering and Technology is committed to the process of extending its activities into the world of industry and commerce. This is central to the University's vision; to become a leading provider of research and development which is both accessible and relevant to the needs of companies and organisations. This vision has driven the School of Engineering and Technology's research and consultancy activities which have flourished over the last few years.

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Recognition

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Module Summary

Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Code	Module	Examination	*Assessment
EN312	Engineering Project	NA	100% Project
EN313	Electronic Circuit Design & Manufacture	80%	20%
EN314	Digital Systems Processing & Applications	70%	30%
EN318	Embedded Systems & Advanced Digital Systems Design,	40%	60%
EN315	Very Large ScaI	80%	20%
*Assessment is categorised as Laboratory Work, Assignment, Oral Assessment, other formal assessment. *Subject to Validation

Engineering Project	Electronic Circuit Design & Manufacture	Digital Signal Processing & Applications	Embedded Systems & Advanced Digital Systems Design	VLSI
EN312	EN313	EN314	EN318	EN315
40 credits	20 credits	20 credits	20 credits	20 credits

EN312 Engineering Project (40 credits)

This unit aims to provide the student, as an individual, an opportunity to carry out an extended study in a specific application of electrical and electronic techniques, and enable the student to develop their analytical, practical and communication skills.

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EN313 Electronic Circuit Design & Manufacture (20 credits)

The unit aims to present modern electronic circuit design methodologies with an emphasis on the performance of manufactured circuits compared with theoretically predicted performance. Typical filter or oscillator circuits will be used to investigate the performance of non-ideal circuits and technologies for estimating manufacturing yields will be studied. In addition current developments in manufacturing technology illustrating the philosophy of total quality in the product life cycle. This unit introduces students to the problems associated with electromagnetic interference and the good design practices required to ensure electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).

EN314 Digital Signal Processing & Applications (20 credits)

This unit aims to make use of the knowledge and analytic skills developed throughout the course to design modern digital systems signal processing systems. Additionally this unit aims to provide students with practical experience of designing and realising real-time digital signal processing algorithms. The student will use a CAE package to support theoretical considerations of the systems design process to make performance predictions. A hardware DSP environment with supporting assembly and debugging software will be used to produce a real-time implementation of the algorithm being studied. A typical algorithm should be a FIR/IIR filter.

EN315 VLSI (20 credits)

This unit aims to develop an understanding of Integrated Circuit design in terms of sub-systems and primitive building blocks, in addition to considering the higher level issues and techniques, associated with designing systems on silicon. This is to be achieved through the analysis and design of such primitives and system-level components, from layout through to spice-level, gate-level and behavioural specification and verification using modern CAD tools. Practical design and implementation issues, such as IC layout and testing, will be emphasised throughout the unit by means of examples and case studies. The commercial issues surrounding Integrated Circuit Development and implementation will be explored.

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EN318 Embedded Systems & Advanced Digital Systems Design (20 credits)

This unit is essentially divided into two halves; Embedded Systems and Advanced Digital Systems Design. The unit aims to develop application of microcontrollers in embedded systems. A number of commercially available microcontrollers will be introduced, and a number of embedded systems examples will be considered in terms of hardware and software requirements. After being introduced to a microcontroller to an industrially based application. The second portion of this unit aims to show the student how to design Finite State Machines (FSMs). Logic simulation programs will be used to verify circuit designs. The use of a standard Hardware Description Language will also be introduced for the design, verification and implementation of digital systems.

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Engineering Employment

· Engineering is one of the most satisfying and best rewarded careers in today’s changing world.

· Engineering is, statistically, among the most secure of professions. The unemployment rate among registered engineers was 0.9% in April 2001 and 2.6% in April 2002. Allowing for the ‘churning rate’, this represents virtually zero unemployment. At the same time the unemployment rate for the labour force as a whole was 5.3% (ILO definition) in April 2001 and 5.2% in April 2002.

· According to a survey commissioned on behalf of the DTI and Barclays, engineering and electrical engineering graduates earn 20% and 33% respectively above the median graduate salary six months after graduation. For 2001 graduates, the figures were a median salary of £18,00 pa for graduate engineers against an average of £15,000 p.a. for all graduates.

· Pay for professional engineers compares very favourably with most other professions. In 2002, the average earnings for Chartered Engineers were nearly £52,000. According to the Office for National Statistics New Earnings Survey, 2001 average earnings for a selection of other key professionals were: solicitors, £44,984; chartered and certified accountants, £34,525; architects, £34,000; and health professionals, £51,880.

· According to the most comprehensive recent survey (2001), over 70% of all professionally qualified engineers in the UK would recommend engineering as a career to a young man and 66% to a young woman – and mainly cite the challenge that the job offers as the reason for doing so.

· The Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey has estimated in 2001 that there were 880,000 professional engineers (including 327,558 software professionals and 135,512 IT strategy and planning professionals) employed throughout the economy (and of which about 500,000 were graduate engineers). Over half of them are underpinning ‘non-engineering’ businesses. Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Engineering Council analysis concludes that 38% (or 33% of LFS graduates) of these work in manufacturing, 8% (or 12% of LFS graduates) in construction, electricity, gas and water supply and the remainder in the service sector.

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