Digital Systems 4: High Speed Systems

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2010:

431-328 Digital Systems 3: Circuits and Systems

On completion of this subject, students should have an understanding of some advanced topics in digital system design, taken from the following.

Timing in digital systems - clock distribution, including sources and management of skew; metastability and synchronisation; the effect of loading; synchronous and asynchronous bit level transport, including line coding, scrambling, clock recovery, timing requirements, jitter (sources and effect), jitter filtering and bit stuffing.

Noise in digital systems - signal referencing; grounding; crosstalk; simultaneous switching; power supply distributions and related issues including impedance of parallel planes, loss and damping, impedance control over frequency, decoupling and interaction of lumped and distributed impedances.

Interfacing to the analogue world - sample and hold circuits; techniques for converting between analogue and digital representations of signal; noise analysis and quantisation effects.

On completion of this subject the student should be able to:

• Explain, assess and apply timing analysis and design techniques to the end of achieving reliable and repeatable operation of digital systems in the face of the limitations imposed by realisation technologies;
• Explain, assess and apply techniques for managing sources of noise in electronic realisations of digital systems;
• Model and assess the performance of techniques for digital sampling of analogue signals.

• One 3-hour end-of-semester written examination (70%);
• Mid-semester test and/or project report not exceeding 20 pages including appendices, diagrams, tables, graphs and computer output (30%).

The relative weighting of test and/or project report will be specified both in the first lecture and on the subject web page at the start of semester.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

• Ability to apply knowledge of basic science and engineering fundamentals

• Ability to communicate effectively, not only with engineers but also with the community at large

• In-depth technical competence in at least one engineering discipline

• Ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution

• Ability to utilise a systems approach to design and operational performance

• Ability to function effectively as an individual and in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams, with the capacity to be a leader or manager as well as an effective team member

• Expectation of the need to undertake lifelong learning, capacity to do so

• Capacity for independent critical thought, rational inquiry and self-directed learning

• Intellectual curiosity and creativity, including understanding of the philosophical and methodological bases of research activity