Welcome, dear students. Now we're looking at the first lecture with the introduction and the welcome to a course for RF and Millimeter Wave Circuit Design, that is part of a set of three courses and that are offered by the Center for Wireless Technology in Eindhoven, that's part of the Eindhoven University of Technology. This specific course about RF millimeter-wave circuit design is being taught by three people and I will just show them here for you. The person to my left is Professor Marion Matters. Her expertise is in high-frequency circuit design and terahertz. To the left, you see Dr. Carlos Mendes da Costa Junior, another colleague of mine who has expertise and very practical experience recently in his PhD research and Postdoc research in implementing the types of circuits that we are discussing. Of course there's me. You might from the videos get the impression that a lot of the work was actually done by Professor Matters and especially also by Dr. Mendes. You might be right because especially Dr. Carlos Mendes is a very active and spent a lot of time in preparing many of these things. Professor Matters has done a lot of the background preparations and I, as you can see, I'm somewhat caught in the middle. What are we going to do in this lecture? Well, we're going to provide you with some knowledge and some experience, both experience in simulating and calculating and designing circuits, but also doing experiments in the area of exactly what the title says, high frequency circuits and millimeter-wave circuits. We start from systems, how to divine the specifications of a system, how to derive them and then we focus on the main building blocks of RF path of transceivers for such wireless systems. We will focus on low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, mixers, oscillators and synthesizers because these are the key blocks that you will find in just about any wireless transceiver. The lectures will be starting with video lectures on the basics, where we focus really on gaining insight on true understanding of the mechanisms behind the circuits and mechanisms behind the systems. That can be followed up by some reading material that we will provide some references to and we will also include in the videos, some examples. Then after that, there are some quizzes and some assignments for you to work on and there will be videos with solutions to these quizzes. Then we will also provide you with simulation files so you have a starting point for experimenting with the types of circuits that we're discussing here, a circuit simulator and using that also as part of the assignment. We will complement that by videos of experiments that are done in the lab. Finally, there is the possibility for you to do experiments at home and that's fairly unique in these type of courses. But we think that RF and millimeter-wave circuit design is something that is not purely a theoretical skill. A lot of the aspects of that make RF circuit design and millimeter-wave circuit design so challenging and so really interesting. I mean, it's one of the nice things that I've done in my career and so I can really recommend it. That's because it's never routine, there's both a knowledge part to it, but also an experience part. Just as it's difficult to learn to ride a bicycle by just watching videos or reading a book, it's hard to learn proper RF and millimeter-wave circuit design by just looking at videos and reading a book. You need to actually try it. You need to make mistakes and you need to learn from these mistakes. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to do these experiments at home in fact, if you really want to follow and benefit in all aspects of this course, that is something that would be required. Now of course, we do realize that not all of you have a very high end lab available to you for the duration of this course and therefore, what we offer are exercises at relatively low frequencies that you can do at home, even with limited equipment. We even designed the experiments such and we provide the assignments this way that you can do that. Even if you don't have the equipment, you can acquire very basic equipment, therefore, relatively affordable some. There is a list in the website of things that you could buy as the very minimal parts, a small network analyzer, the smallest telescope, some basic components, a breadboard, that allow you to build the circuits and do these experiments. Our university cannot help you acquire this, but we can point you to where you can buy this type of equipment. You're of course welcome to buy or use more advanced equipment, but we make the cost so that you can do this in a very basic way and for relatively little money. However, doing this comes with all kinds of disclaimers and you can read on the website the extensive disclaimers for this part of the course, and please pay attention to that. We cannot guarantee you or support you in any way beyond what we have and these videos in using or acquiring this equipment. But still, I think you will find that it adds a lot of value to the course to not just look at these things in theory, do not just look at these things on the computer and the simulator, but to see them working in reality. At the end of this course, you should be capable to use the equipment and the components that we recommend to actually built and measure, and optimize a complete transmitter and receiver system. I hope you will enjoy this course. We worked very hard to bring you a lot of material and to support you in being successful in this course and we will continue to do so for the duration of this course, of course. This course was developed in the time that the Corona pandemic was going around the world so that's the reason that Carlos and Marion are not physically there, but we hope soon to be working together again in our university building and helping to support to you during the course from there. Enjoy your course you and I'm looking forward to interacting with you and helping you with any questions or any remarks that you have. Please also provide us with feedback about this course; what you find good and not-so-good and what you would recommend and changes for the next generation. Thanks a lot and enjoy.
