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Technology Review

Overview and Rationale
No designs are created in a vacuum.  Most designs are improvements or modifications of existing designs or products, possibly undertaken to incorporate the latest technology, improve performance, or aID features.  Oftendesign projects are done largely as a way to obtain a needed capability without having to buy it from someone else.  Regardless, it is always invaluable to perform a literature review at the beginning of a design project both to learn what is already available and to better understand the underlying technology.  Information learned from such a review invariably leads to a much better design, particularly in regards to setting realistic specifications and incorporating required codes and standards.

What a Technical Review is NOT
€¢    It is NOT a summary of your design project.
€¢    It is NOT a proposal of what you’d like to work on for your project.
€¢    It should NOT mention or refer to your design project at all.
€¢    It is NOT an opinion paper.  Do NOT use 1st or 2nd person.
€¢    It is NOT busy work.

What a Technical Review IS
€¢    It IS a concise, fact-based summary of a specific aspect of a specific technology.
€¢    It IS written to briefly convey what’s currently on the market, how the thing works, and what components/parts make the thing work (hardware, software).
€¢    It IS a useful way to research what’s going on with a specific technology and to quickly get up to speed on a technology or product.
€¢    It IS the first step toward designing your senior project.
€¢    It IS the foundation of your design Proposal.

The focus of this assignment is to prepare a technical review of a specific component of a technology and to find out what similar products/devices are currently on the market.In short, the goal is to learn the state-of-the-art. By the end of the first week of class, you should know the general area of your project, and possibly the specific topic.  If you haven’t selected a specific topic, then this technology review should help you make that decision.  This is an individual assignment and must be prepared by you alone with no assistance from your teammates, although you should be discussing your findings since they may impact your project.

Selecting and Narrowing Your Topic/Project
At this point, many of you have a vague notion of what you would like to work on for your senior design project.  You may have an actual project in mind (e.g., designing a hospital bed for paraplegics) or you may have an area of interest(e.g., DSP) but aren’t sure what to do with it yet.

Consider an example of a student who is interested in DSP.  This is too broad a topic not only for this writing assignment butfor a senior design project.  The topic will have to be narrowed considerably.  The student is particularly interested in a specific aspect of DSP, pattern recognition, and within that area, he is most interested in noise monitoring and classification.  Now the student is ready to begin the technical review and write a 1 ½ to 2 pagesummary by researching the following information.

Required Content for the Technical Review Paper
1.    What are the commercial applications of this technology?Are there any existing products available?  Who makes them and how much do they cost?  List, explain, and summarize what is on the market.  For example, you might find that there are security systems using acoustic sensors, general noise monitoring instruments, and military applications of acoustic sensors used for monitoring and tracking vehicles.

2.    How does the underlying technology work?For example, what are the frequency ranges of interest?  What algorithms are out there?  What are relevant measures of performance?  (NOTE: You don’t need to understand the algorithms or the technical details of how the technology works at this stage in the process.  You just need to be able to find and briefly summarize the information.)

3.    What are the building blocks for implementing the technology?  Are both hardware and software required?  Is any special hardware available (e.g., amplifiers, ASICs)?  What about embeIDed processor platforms?  Wireless networks?  Power considerations?

How to Get Started
Distribute work among team members. If you are already part of a senior design team and your team has selected a topic/project, you are encouraged to have each member research and write about a different aspect of the technology.  For example, if your team is interested in designing a wetness detection mattress cover, you might divide the research into the various components (hardware and software) of the design such as sensors used in similar products/designs, fabric/materials used in similar products/designs, etc.  This is an excellent way to learn as much as possible about the topic by having each team member review a specific area.  NOTE:  Each student will receive an individual grade on this assignment, so each technical review must be done individually.

Assignment Details
1.    Locate at least six current(anything prior to 2010 is not considered current)sources of information of at least four different types (more are fine).  Examples of source types include: (1) refereed journal articles, (2) conference proceedings, (3) trade magazines, (4) books, (5) company sales literature, (6) company technical reference manuals, (7) web sites, (8) lecture notes, (9) interviews, (10) data sheets, (11) codes and standards, and (12) patents.  Remember, the purpose is twofold: determining the state-of-the-art and understanding underlying technology.

NOTE: Wikipedia is NOT a respected, credible source and should not be used as a cited source.

2.    Write 1 ½ to 2 pages summarizing your findings in paragraph form.  You should not describe the technology in detail, but the reader needs to be convinced that you have truly searched the literature, that you know what is out there in terms of research and commercial products, and that you know where to find technical details.

3.    Cite all of your sources using IEEE documentation style.

4.    Do not include any figures or tables.  However, be sure to include information on any relevant codes and standards.

5.    The paper format is line spacing of 1.5, Times New Roman,11 point font.  The required length should beabout 1½ to 2 pages.  Do not include references as part of the page length.

6.    You should have a short introductory paragraph describing the big picture and the specific component/aspect of the technology that your paper focuses on.For instance, the big picture would be wetness detection technology.  The specific aspect of your paper might be sensors that are currently used to detect wetness.

7.    Section headings are required as they help the reader navigate your paper.

8.    This assignment is due in lecture.  Late papers will not be accepted.  Save a soft copy of the paper.  You will be required to post it to your team’s website once it has been created.

9.    Although it is acceptable to talk to your team members about the assignment, papers from the same team will be closely compared to make sure that you turn in your own work.  In particular, the content should clearly be unique, and references should not be the same (although there may be some overlap).