Electromagnetism EQUP 3322

Course description:

This course explores electromagnetic phenomena in modern applications, including wireless and optical communications, circuits, computer interconnects and peripherals, microwave communications and radar, antennas, sensors, micro-electromechanical systems, and power generation and transmission. Fundamentals include quasistatic and dynamic solutions to Maxwell's equations; waves, radiation, and diffraction; coupling to media and structures; guided waves; resonance; acoustic analogs; and forces, power, and energy.

Course Aims:

Course seeks to enable students to achieve the following objectives:

Understand the big ideas of electromagnetics, including:

  • Static and dynamic electromagnetic (EM) fields, energy, and power
  • EM fields and waves within and at the boundaries of media
  • EM radiation and propagation in space and within transmission lines
  • Circuit behavior of simple EM devices and transmission lines
  • EM forces on charges, currents, and materials; mechanically produced fields
  • Photon behavior

Relate the big ideas of EM to economically important applications, including:

  • Wireless and wired communications systems
  • Electronic circuits and systems, analog and digital
  • Actuators (motors) and sensors (generators)
  • Optical and acoustic devices and systems

Exercise mathematical skills, including:
  • Vectors and phasors
  • Partial differential equations

Course outcomes:

Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

  • Fields and energies in simple planar, cylindrical, and spherical geometries
  • Fields within conducting, anisotropic, and plasma media
  • Resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, transmission lines, and resonators
  • Electric and magnetic forces on charges, wires, and media
  • Electric and magnetic motors and sensor/generators
  • Sinusoids and transients on TEM lines with mismatched impedances and tuning
  • EM fields at planar boundaries and within waveguides, including evanescence
  • Wireless and wired systems for communicating at R bits/second
  • Wire, aperture, and array antennas for transmission and reception
  • Simple photonic and acoustic devices

In most cases students will derive these results from Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz force law, and will demonstrate their achieved outcomes in homework problems and, on a random sampling basis, examinations.