Jump to: Project Proposal Design Review Final Project Demonstration Final Written Report
The Project Proposal is a written document (typically 3-10 pages) that describes the intended final result of your work done during the last half of ECE 420. The Project Proposal can generally be expected to serve as a basis for the Introduction, Background Research, and parts of the system design portions of the Final Report, should the proposed approaches prove successful. The proposal should contain at least the following things:
The Design Review will consist of a prepared oral presentation with supporting visuals (e.g., PowerPoint), to an expert panel consisting of the ECE 420 teaching staff and possibly additional outside experts, describing in detail the project goals, the proposed project design, the background research findings or other arguments leading to the selection of this approach as the preferred solution, and a plan for completion including milestones, timetables, and individual responsibilities or work packages. A test and verification plan must also be included.
The Project Proposal and Design Review serve to summarize the background research and the preliminary decisions as to the exact scope of the project, the algorithms and approach to be used, and the expected final product; in the absence of unanticipated problems, the work following the design review should consist of implementation and testing of the proposed system. It also serves as a kind of ``contract,'' specifying (to the mutual agreement of both the student and the teaching staff) the technical accomplishments required for full credit. Final evaluation of the project will be based on successful completion of the proposed work as agreed upon after the Design Review.
The final project demonstration will be a scheduled but relatively informal review by the ECE 420 teaching staff of the (hopefully) completed project in action. The project team will demonstrate their system, or all working components if incomplete, perform verification experiments or show test results confirming to the satisfaction of the course staff that it works as designed, and answer any questions.
Each project team will submit a final report. This written report should include at least an Introduction (1-2 pages), a Literature or Research Review (2-3 pages), a Technical Description of the project including equations, block diagrams, and possibly pseudocode (4-6 pages), a Results section including description of problems you ran into, descriptions of tests you used to diagnose and fix problems, and descriptions of tests you used to confirm that the project does what it's supposed to do (4-6 pages), and finally, Suggestions for Extensions and/or Modifications (1-3 pages). In appendices (not in the main body of the report), provide Software and Hardware Documentation including all of the source code you wrote (with comments!!), circuit diagrams for any hardware you created (cite the source, if you used somebody else's design), logic diagrams, etc., as applicable. All source code that you wrote should be attached as an appendix to this document. In short, the documentation should be concise, but sufficient for another student to easily take up where the project left off or to use the results in a future project.