facebook pixel Skip to Main Content
Idaho State University home
Apply
Give

Use of Cadence Software within the Electrical Engineering Program

Idaho State University is a member of the Cadence University Program. We have adopted Cadence software as our main electrical simulation and design tool suite. A demo version of the Cadence software, the OrCAD tools suite, is installed on all workstations in LEL 234, the Engineering Technical Computing and CAD Classroom/Laboratory. This includes capture, layout, routing, PCB edit, and simulation capabilities (by way of Allegro, Virtuoso, and PSpice), and is used by students for homework assignments and term projects in several classes.

Currently, CoSE IT personnel are working to install and test the Cadence software on the server which is simultaneously going through hardware upgrades. Six workstations in LEL 9, the electrical laboratory, will be configured to network boot from the server and to run the Cadence software from it.

Among the classes using Cadence/OrCAD tools are:

  • EE 2240 – Introduction to Electrical Circuits
  • EE 3329 – Introduction to Electronics
  • EE 3340 – Fundamentals of Electrical Devices
  • EE 3342 – Fundamentals of Electrical Devices Laboratory
  • EE 3345 – Signals and Systems
  • EE 4429 – Advanced Electronics
  • EE 4429L – Advanced Electronics Laboratory
  • EE 4432 – Introduction to VLSI Design
  • EE 4474 – Advanced Circuit Theory
  • EE 4496 – Project Design

We also plan to deploy the Cadence tool suite in the Embedded Controls and Systems Lab (Dr. Steve Chiu’s research lab), where graduate and advanced undergraduate students are working on theses or implementation projects within the Measurement and Control Engineering Research Center. Supplementing other development platforms used for embedded and electronic systems research, the Cadence tool suite compliments and further strengthens the lab’s design, modeling and simulation capabilities.

Among the graduate students who have used this software are:

  • Luka Daoud (Ph.D. student), who worked on accelerators in high-performance computing. The software was used to perform high-level synthesis of parallel software and to reconfigure the FPGAs in runtime.
  • Alex Jensen (Ph.D. student), who used it for designing and implementing an over-current protection circuit to isolate the microcontroller from the plant (which uses DC servo motors).
  • Ahmed Khamis (PhD Candidate), worked on Advanced Tracking Strategies for Nonlinear Control Systems and validating simulations with an experimental setup.
  • Girish Sriram (M.S. student), who used it for design and simulation of a slippage sensing system in applications that involve a hand's grasping motion.

 

Page last updated: 12-10-2018