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Engineers today are required both to have a mastery of ‘traditional’ technological skills and to be competent with a variety of ‘soft skills’ such as teamworking and the ability to present or sell their ideas. At the same time the technological skill requirements are broader. There is a gradual shift from knowledge of specialist fields, to engineers with a fluency in system integration and embedded system design. This paper describes the development of an undergraduate module in embedded systems design. The learning approach taken is that of a cooperative, enquiry-based project to build a small robot. This allows both technical skills and soft skills to be developed in a supportive environment. The student team is required to plan the design and construction of hardware and software for a unit built around an inexpensive commercial microcontroller. This paper describes the module design rationale, the structure given to the students, their performance and evaluates the educational results of what was a well-received learning activity.

This paper describes the design and delivery of the Microcontroller Engineering teaching theme in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester. The theme was fi rst introduced in the 2002/2003 academic session, and comprises four highly integrated practical units delivered in the fi rst two years of all the School's BEng and MEng undergraduate courses. The paper describes the teaching and learning objectives of the theme, its implementation, and an evaluation carried out as part of a Higher Education Academy (HEA) case study.

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Multi-mode and multi-band communication networks have emerged as a step towards true 3"' Generation (3G) networks. In this paper, novel integrated RF hnt-ends for multi-modehand handsets are described. The advantages of an integrated front-end are demonstrated by measurement results of a prototype EGSMPCS --end module. It is shown that this integrated RF module offers a substantial improvement in the present state of handset design,