Course Description
EEE 4301L Electronics II Laboratory is the 1-credit laboratory taken alongside EEE 4301 Electronics II. Where the Electronics I laboratory concentrated on characterising devices and confirming a bias point, this one is a design laboratory: students build multistage and feedback amplifiers, measure loop gain and stability margins, and discover that a design which simulates cleanly can oscillate on the bench.
Two Florida institutions carry it — Florida A&M University and Florida State University, which share the joint FAMU–FSU College of Engineering. Both carry it at 1 credit and title it Electronics II Lab. FSU lists it as a co-requisite of EEE 4301 and describes it as an advanced electronic laboratory course; its prerequisites are EEE 3300 and EEE 3300L.
The Statewide Course Numbering System files this laboratory against the same statewide record as the lecture, titled Electronic Circuits and Systems Design, covering “multistage amplifier analysis and design including feedback and operational amplifiers, A-to-D and D-to-A converters, waveshaping and waveforming generators including oscillators, voltage regulators, and power circuits.”
⚠ Budget by contact hours, not credits. A 1-credit engineering laboratory meets two to three hours a week in a scheduled session, and at this level the design work done outside the session frequently exceeds the session itself. It is the course most often underestimated in a senior-year schedule.
Learning Outcomes
Required Outcomes
- Construct multistage amplifiers and measure overall gain, input resistance and output resistance, accounting for interstage loading.
- Measure the effect of negative feedback on gain, bandwidth, distortion and terminal impedances by comparing open-loop and closed-loop behaviour of the same amplifier.
- Measure an amplifier’s loop gain and phase, determine gain and phase margin, and demonstrate the onset of instability.
- Apply frequency compensation to a marginally stable amplifier and verify the improvement by measurement.
- Measure real operational amplifier non-idealities — input offset voltage, bias current, slew rate, gain–bandwidth product and CMRR — against the datasheet.
- Build and characterise active filters, measuring the frequency response against the designed approximation and cut-off.
- Build oscillators and waveshaping circuits, verify the Barkhausen condition experimentally, and measure frequency stability and output purity.
- Characterise a data converter for resolution, linearity and conversion rate.
- Measure power amplifier efficiency and observe crossover distortion, and evaluate thermal behaviour under load.
- Design a circuit to a written specification, verify it in simulation, build it, and reconcile measurement with prediction.
- Report design work in professional technical form, including the design rationale and not merely the results.
Optional Outcomes
- Measure noise and compute noise figure for a low-noise stage.
- Characterise a switching regulator for efficiency, ripple and transient response.
- Use a spectrum analyser to quantify total harmonic distortion.
- Build on printed circuit board rather than breadboard, and observe the difference parasitics make.
- Complete an open-ended team design project as the culminating laboratory.
Major Topics
Required Topics
- Multistage amplifier construction and measurement — cascaded stages, interstage loading, cascode and differential configurations.
- Feedback amplifier measurement — identifying the topology in a built circuit, measuring open-loop and closed-loop gain, and quantifying desensitivity and bandwidth extension.
- Stability measurement — loop gain and phase measurement, Bode plotting from measured data, gain and phase margin, and deliberately provoking oscillation to see what marginal stability looks like.
- Frequency compensation — dominant-pole and Miller compensation applied and verified.
- Operational amplifier characterisation — offset nulling, bias current measurement, slew-rate measurement from a large-signal step, gain–bandwidth product from the closed-loop response, and CMRR.
- Active filter construction — Sallen–Key and multiple-feedback sections, measured magnitude and phase response, component tolerance effects.
- Oscillators and timing circuits — Wien bridge, phase-shift and relaxation oscillators; comparators and Schmitt triggers; the 555 timer.
- Data converters — R-2R ladder DAC construction, ADC characterisation, quantisation error observation.
- Power stages and regulators — class AB output stage, crossover distortion, efficiency measurement, linear regulator line and load regulation, thermal behaviour.
- Simulation-to-measurement correlation — SPICE prediction, bench measurement, and disciplined accounting for the difference.
- Design reporting — specification, design rationale, simulation evidence, measured verification, and discussion of discrepancy.
Optional Topics
- Noise measurement and low-noise design verification.
- Switched-mode power supply construction and measurement.
- Harmonic distortion measurement with a spectrum analyser.
- Instrumentation amplifier and sensor signal-conditioning chains.
- PCB layout, grounding, decoupling and the practical consequences of parasitics.
- Open-ended capstone-style design project.
Resources & Tools
- The laboratory follows the lecture text — most commonly Microelectronic Circuits (Sedra and Smith) — with a departmental laboratory manual from the FAMU–FSU College of Engineering as the operative document. The Art of Electronics (Horowitz and Hill) is the most useful bench companion at this level.
- Bench instruments — digital storage oscilloscope, function generator, triple-output DC supply, digital multimeter, and where available a network/gain-phase analyser or a spectrum analyser. Measuring loop gain properly requires either a dedicated instrument or the Middlebrook injection technique, which is itself worth learning.
- Devices — LM741 (still used because its limitations are large enough to measure), TL08x, LM358, OP07, LF356; LM317 and LM78xx regulators; NE555; 2N3904/2N3906 and complementary power devices such as TIP31/TIP32.
- SPICE — LTspice or PSpice, used before the bench session rather than after it. At this level the expected workflow is design, simulate, build, measure, reconcile.
- MATLAB for Bode plotting of measured data and filter approximation.
- Manufacturer resources — Texas Instruments and Analog Devices application notes and reference designs, and the free filter design tools (TI FilterPro, ADI Analog Filter Wizard) that practising engineers actually use.
Career Pathways
- Analog design engineer — this laboratory is the closest undergraduate experience to the actual work, and the ability to describe a feedback amplifier you stabilised is a concrete interview asset.
- Electronics engineer (SOC 17-2072) and electrical engineer (SOC 17-2071).
- Test and validation engineer; hardware verification engineer in aerospace and defence electronics.
- Applications engineer at a semiconductor manufacturer — the role most directly built on bench characterisation of real parts against datasheets.
- Power electronics engineer and instrumentation engineer.
- Florida employers include L3Harris (Palm Bay and Melbourne), Lockheed Martin (Orlando), Northrop Grumman (Melbourne and St. Augustine), Raytheon/RTX (Largo), Jabil (St. Petersburg), Danfoss (Tallahassee), Siemens Energy (Orlando) and NSWC Panama City, which recruits regularly from the FAMU–FSU College of Engineering.
- Employers consistently report graduates arriving strong in simulation and weak at the bench. Instrument fluency demonstrated from this course is an uncommon and immediately credible advantage.
Special Information
⚠⚠ Separate registration from the lecture
EEE 4301L is a separate course from EEE 4301, with its own enrolment and its own grade. FSU lists EEE 4301 as a co-requisite, so both are taken in the same term, and the laboratory’s own prerequisites are EEE 3300 and EEE 3300L.
- Register for both halves. Enrolling in the lecture and omitting the laboratory is a recurring error, usually discovered after add/drop — and because EEE 4301 gates later electives, it can delay graduation by a term.
- The pair is worth 4 credits (3 + 1), not 3.
- Two grades appear on the transcript. A 1-credit laboratory can still cost a letter grade of standing if reports are neglected.
The University of South Florida carries EEE 4301 without a matching EEE 4301L in the statewide record, so the packaging is not the same everywhere. Check your own catalog.
⚠ Course-code variation across Florida
Only FAMU and FSU carry EEE 4301L. Elsewhere the equivalent laboratory work is either integrated into the lecture course or numbered differently — the University of West Florida pairs EEE 4306L with EEE 4306, while the University of Central Florida (EEE 4309C) and Florida International University (EEE 4304C) integrate the laboratory into a 4-credit course with no separate laboratory number.
SCNS equivalency does not cross course numbers, and laboratory credit is among the hardest to substitute in transfer, because receiving departments often want evidence of specific measurement competencies rather than a topic list. Keep the laboratory manual and at least one complete design report — a report showing a specification, a design, and measured verification is far more persuasive than a syllabus.
Laboratory safety and conduct
Voltages remain modest, but this laboratory introduces hazards the first one did not:
- Power stages dissipate real power. Class AB output stages and regulators under load reach burn temperature quickly, and a thermal runaway in a poorly biased output stage can destroy devices in seconds.
- Electrolytic capacitors in power supply and coupling positions must be correctly polarised and adequately rated; a reversed or over-volted part can vent.
- Higher supply rails are sometimes used for power amplifier work — confirm the rail voltage before probing.
- Unintended oscillation at radio frequencies is common in high-gain breadboarded circuits and can damage devices as well as confuse measurements. Learning to recognise and suppress it is part of the course.
Eye protection, no food or drink at the bench, and powering down before rewiring are standard. Follow the departmental safety briefing.
Assessment and format
Assessment normally combines pre-laboratory design work, in-session performance and a written report, with the design report carrying most of the weight at this level. Pre-laboratory work here is genuine design rather than arithmetic: you are expected to arrive with a schematic, component values and a simulation, and the session is for building and measuring. Arriving without them generally means the session is wasted.
Work is often done in pairs, and a culminating open-ended project may be done in teams. Shared data with individual analysis is the normal arrangement — check the syllabus, because submitting shared analysis is usually a violation even where shared measurement is not.
Position in the curriculum
EEE 4301L sits in the junior or senior year alongside EEE 4301, following EEE 3300/EEE 3300L. The design-and-verify discipline it establishes is directly assumed by the senior design sequence, and by the analogue integrated-circuit electives (EEE 4376C, EEE 4377) that follow.
Articulation and transfer
SCNS records the course as guaranteed to transfer to an institution offering the same course. With only two Florida institutions carrying the number, and those two operating a joint college, the practical reach is narrow. Both carry it at 1 credit. The course is upper-division and carries no general-education or Gordon Rule designation.
AI Integration
This laboratory is a good place to be precise about what AI assistance can and cannot do, because the deliverable is measurement and the design judgement is the assessed skill.
Where it helps. Diagnosing an unexpected oscilloscope trace; suggesting an ordered fault-finding sequence when a built circuit misbehaves; explaining why a breadboarded high-gain amplifier oscillates and what to do about it; generating plotting and curve-fitting scripts; and drafting or tightening report prose. Interpreting an unfamiliar datasheet parameter is another real use.
⚠ Where it fails, and why the coincidence matters here. Two failures are specific to this course.
First, a model will generate plausible measurement data on request — a clean gain-versus-frequency table that matches theory exactly, with none of the spread, drift or asymmetry real measurement carries. That is data fabrication, which engineering programmes treat as more serious than ordinary plagiarism. It is also self-defeating: the entire point of this laboratory is that the real circuit departs from the model, so a generated dataset removes exactly the information the course exists to give you.
Second, and specific to Electronics II: an AI tool asked to design a feedback amplifier will report the closed-loop gain and omit the stability check. On the bench that omission is not an abstraction — the circuit oscillates, and the student who trusted the generated design spends the session chasing a fault that was designed in. The discipline this laboratory teaches is that a gain specification is not met until phase margin is measured, and that is precisely the step generated answers skip.
The engineer’s responsibility. Measured data is a factual claim about a physical event at a particular bench at a particular time, and an engineer signs for it. In regulated sectors, fabricated test data is a matter for licensure boards and sometimes for law. The habit of never reporting a number you did not observe is formed in courses exactly like this one.
Academic integrity. FAMU and FSU both maintain academic honour policies covering AI-generated work, and laboratory and design reports are frequently governed by stricter rules than other assignments. Discussion of technique is generally permitted; generated data and generated analysis generally are not. Ask before you use a tool, and disclose its use where required.