Final Year Projects (module 4020)

The objective of the final year project module is to provide students with the opportunity to apply their theoretical knowledge to a substantial electrical engineering problem requiring analytical and/or design and/or experimental effort. The project module gives final year engineers an opportunity to use many different subjects from the electrical engineering degree, and also enables students to practice and, where necessary, improve their analytical skills in engineering situations where there may not be a single, simple, correct solution. Each student, as an individual engineer or as part of a team, pursues a problem and reaches the best outcome with the resources and time available.

The final year project is also an assessment of performance away from a formal examination, and it is a student’s ability in this environment that is often scrutinised by employers. The project demonstrates a student’s work ethic, level of initiative, determination and methods of problem solving, and whether a student is adaptable and able to think laterally when difficulties are encountered. The project also gives an early indication of an engineer’s project management skills, as each student is largely responsible for their own programme of work. The project module is effectively an all-round test of general engineering ability.

Final year project titles that were offered to students recently have included the following:

·       A Carbon Dioxide Marking Laser

·       A charge-pump bias control circuit for avalanche photodiodes

·       A complete golf-swing analyser

·       A Laser based anemometer

·       An ultrasonic anemometer for Mars exploration

·       Artefact Rejection in EEG signals

·       Characterization of capacitive ultrasonic transducer MEMs

·       Design and Development of a SCADA System for an Electrical Machine Test Rig

·       Design of a Nitrogen Laser

·       DSP-based Acceleration Measurement of Rotating Systems

·       FIRA Mirosot robot soccer

·       GSM Control of a SmartHome Using a PSoC®

·       High Power DC/DC Converter Automotive Applications

·       High speed imaging of golf-ball impact

·       HPC Implementation of WPM Symbol Error Analysis

·       HVLV Bidirectional Converter

·       Implementation of Hodgekin-Huxlex Neuron Model in an Electronic Simulator

·       Investigation of ZigBee® Sensor Network Platforms

·       Mach-Zehnder interferometry of ultrasound in air

·       On Line Real Time Energy Information System

·       PIC-based control of a photon-counting detector

·       Power Converter Modelling

·       Reader/Writer Electronics for Commercial RFID Tags

·       RFID Passport

·       Solid State Film to Video Transfer

·       Subband Adaptive Equalisation of Time Varying Channels

·       Torque measuring system for a hydraulic motor

·       Ultrasonic tomographic reconstruction from diffracting sources

·       Volume fraction analysis through image processing

·       Windpower Doubly-Fed Induction Generator Power and Control

·       Windpower Inverter