Our Facilities

Computing Labs

The School provides six laboratories exclusively for Computing and Electronic Systems students. Lab sizes, typically 25 or more machines, are designed to allow one-to-one interaction between staff and students during scheduled class times. The University is served by an Gigabit Ethernet LAN, and students have free access to the internet, web and world-wide e-mail from all workstations. The School has its own Gigabit backbone and standard network connectivity is 100Mbit/second. The specifications are kept up-to-date by renewing the machines on a rolling basis, and new systems are close to the highest specification possible at the time of purchase to cope with the computational demands of the latest application development environments.

Two of our labs are open for 24 hours a day including weekends. Students have free access to the labs except when there is a scheduled practical class in progress. Our labs are managed by an experienced and dedicated team of technical support staff who can assist students with most practical aspects of the curriculum - for example, advising on how to overcome programming problems.

In addition to the School's labs, students are entitled to use all of the Computing Service's general access labs. Research students are provided with office space and dedicated equipment so they do not need to use the labs.

You do not need to own a computer to follow our courses. For those who have a computer, there are network access points in all study bedrooms on campus or you can dial in from home via the University's modems. Students can purchase computers through the University's Computing Service.

Our six general computing laboratories run either Windows Vista or are dual boot with Linux. Much software is common to both systems (eg. Java, Prolog, C++, Perl, Mysql, Vxworks, Matlab, DB2), but there is also platform-specific software such as Microsoft Office, Visual Studio dot NET and Project. These machines are all fitted with CD writers, and many have DVD writers. We also provide Linux systems for remote connection through either a secure shell (SSH) connection, or via a remote Xsession (a Windows-like graphical Interface). There is also specialised software installed such as computer-aided design tools and simulators for chip design (Xilinx) and computer networks (Opnet).

MSDNAA, a CES software service, allowing a considerable number of Microsoft packages to be freely available to students, and staff.

The Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) Lab

The BCI Lab comprises 70m² within the School. The lab is divided in four experimental areas, one of them being shielded against EM interference.  The lab is one of the best equipped facilities for non-invasive BCI research in Europe.  Our equipment includes: 5 EEG systems (2 Biosemi ActiveTwo systems, 64 and 128 channels, respectively; 2 32-channel gTec systems, and a 24-channel Mindset system), a 24-channel near infra-red system, a 16-channel Nexus EMG system (plus 8-channels for other physiological signals), a Jazz eye tracker, a MagStim BitStim transcranial magnetic stimulation system, many Biometrics Ltd electrogoniometers and accelerometers, two Edubot robotic manipulators, 3 Lego NXT robots, three virtual reality systems, and 4 Bionics electrically-controlled medical chairs, aside from the necessary computer equipment to interface with the above devices.  We also have a 182-processor Viglen/Rocks cluster dedicated to our research.  

Note: we do not do research with animals or with implanted devices in our lab. For more information on our BCI research, please visit: http://csee.essex.ac.uk/Research/BCIs/  

Robotics Lab

The Brooker Robotics Lab (a PC environment with 30 dual boot PCs) is equipped with about 25 mobile robots (of three different types) and 10 miniature 'intelligent' rooms, and is used for intelligent embedded systems and robotics work. A range of specialist software is used, and most notably a cross-development system called Tornado (the latest version of VxWorks: the software used in the recent Pathfinder project for the Mars Explorer vehicle) for developing embedded systems.

Robot Arena

The Robot Arena is a 100 square metre laboratory with a 6 metre ceiling height for flying robots. It has one of the world largest powered lab floors for long duration experiments of mobile robots. The Robot Arena features a range of dedicated robotic equipment including a state-of-the-art 3D motion tracking system.

Video studio

Our video studio has facilities for both live television production and video recording. It is equipped with three SONY High Definition cameras (with another two available for location shoots), an 8-channel Panasonic video mixer, an 8-channel DigiDesign digital audio mixer with ProTools software, a talkback system and a 12-channel lighting rig with a Tempo 12 controller. Blue screen facilities are available to support chroma-keying in either live broadcasts or post-production. Post-production facilities include PCs supporting the Adobe video suite (Audition, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Encore) as well as five professional AVID Composer editing workstations.

Professional audio seminar room

The School supports a dedicated seminar room/digital theatre designed especially to augment our degree courses in Audio Engineering and Multimedia. This space is equipped with state-of-the-art high performance multi-channel sound and large-screen video projection that can be driven either from DVD or by a dedicated PC linked to the campus network. Consequently lecturers can present Power Point or PDF lecture slides, video clips and Internet sites as well as demonstrate high-quality video linked to a DVD source. Also, the facility supports both software demonstrations by connecting a lecturer's laptop to the projector and enables video conferencing to other teaching and research organizations. The 1.4 kW, 7-channel audio system employs high-end loudspeakers manufactured by Bowers and Wilkins that are supplemented by two self-powered sub-woofers each with 1 kW of amplification. Front-end electronics located in a dedicated control room supports most multi-channel audio formats including SACD, DVD-audio, Dolby AC-3, DTS and, of course, standard CD.

Embedded Systems Laboratory

The Embedded Systems Laboratory provides software and hardware facilities for the design, construction and prototyping of a variety of embedded system solutions.   The primary focus of the laboratory is to provide an environment where ARM based embedded systems can be prototyped and tested as part of a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Sixteen dedicated, dual screen, workstations are provided together with a range of state of the art test equipment to support the development process.   In addition a number of soldering stations are provided to enable the construction of custom designed hardware. Such hardware will be designed by students as part of the courses they undertake.  

Electronics laboratory

Our electronics laboratory is equipped with a standard set of modern bench equipment, including Tektronix digital oscilloscopes, bench power supplies, signal generators and with the accuracy and convenience of modern multimeters and the superior visual trend-display of traditional moving-coil Avometers. The oscilloscopes are linked to networked PCs so that students can capture waveforms from circuits under test and save the captured waveforms to their own personal networked disk space, from where they can later retrieve the saved waveforms for use in technical reports. The networked PC can also be used of course to access online lecture notes, and manufacturer's data sheets and catalogues on the Internet (and of course any other handy information on the Internet, such as tutorials, encyclopaedia articles, online library resources, that may be useful while working on a laboratory assignment or project work). Of course, there are also soldering irons and other wiring equipment, plus a stock of electronic components.

MSc communications laboratory

This laboratory provides hands on experience in topics associated with modern telecommunications techniques including: digital transmission, modulation, PCM, optical transmission, microwave techniques, and quantisation and sampling. The equipment includes 300MHz digital oscilloscopes, a 6GHz vector network analyser, an optical time domain reflectometer, a Bit Error Rate test set, optical amplifiers and modulators. All the oscilloscopes are capable of spectral analysis (FFT).

Measurement techniques used in the lab include eye diagrams to analyse difficulties associated with digital systems, the spectral analysis of PCM and FM systems with investigations into aliasing and bandwidth use. Advanced equipment is used for microwave investigations where stripline components are examined, and measurements of impedance, as well as transmission and return losses can be made. A full optical transmission system is available, with realistic data rates at 200Mb/s and a transmission distance in excess of 16km. Finally the transmission of video images can be investigated, including coding, filtering and bandwidth.

MSc laser/photonics laboratory

This laboratory has semiconductor lasers, detectors and analytical equipment such as optical and frequency spectrum analysers. Spectra captured by the analysers can be saved as images and data for creating reports.

Computer and network laboratory

Our teaching in networking requires students to configure and experiment with networks, which is, of course, not allowed in normal teaching laboratories. Therefore we have a specialised laboratory designed so that students can reconfigure the networking. This lab has 32 workstations, which are PCs with demountable hard disks. Once a student has been issued with a disk, he or she is able to act as administrator/super user and install and configure not only the operating system (usually Windows XP or Redhat Fedora Linux), but also server software, networking software or anything else. The physical configuration of the network in the lab can also be modified by students.

Printed circuit milling facility

A facility to manufacture prototype printed circuit boards is essential for an electronics School, both for research and for student projects. In the past many departments have used a wet etching process, whereby unwanted areas of copper are etched away by corrosive chemicals. This is the same process used for mass production, as it is relatively quick. However, it is also environmentally undesirable. The method currently employed by the School uses a computer controlled milling machine, which creates isolation channels around tracks and devices. Larger areas of copper can also be removed to give a traditional look by using the appropriate tools. The milling machine also has the advantage of being able to drill multiple holes automatically, eliminating the lengthy process of drilling manually.

Research Facilities

Semiconductor clean room

The cleanroom has the essential equipment needed to create semiconductor devices like light emitters and receivers from novel wafer structures. Electrical connections are made with gold wires thinner than a human hair using wirebonders and other bonding techniques used by worldwide semiconductor manufacturers. The devices made in the facility may have etched features with dimensions smaller than a micrometre. Thin film contacts and waveguides for the devices are deposited by a vacuum coating system. The contact metals (gold and dopants like germanium, tin, magnesium and zinc) are annealed to make the ohmic and Schottky contacts needed for devices like MESFETs.

Optical communications laboratory

This laboratory is a world-leader in optical fibre communication, with extensive experimental rigs and equipment for the study of optical packet-switching and optical routing.

Audio research laboratory

Established in 1976, the Audio Research Laboratory (ARL) provides a bespoke facility for conducting research into multi-channel audio, audio coding, loudspeaker systems and system measurement. It includes an isolated listening space as well as a student facility equipped with networked computers. The listening space incorporates a sixteen-channel monitoring system exploiting small-profile, low diffraction loudspeakers, multi-channel amplifiers and multi-channel high-resolution soundcards. Tools supporting loudspeaker investigation are provided as well as a range of electronic instrumentation for audio evaluation, spectral analysis and maximum length sequence (MLS) measurements. By way of example, recent work has included topics on the HILN low bit rate coder for spatial teleconferencing, recently invented "soundlet processing", switching amplifier systems and virtual instrumentation exploiting Volterra system modelling, where a wide range of published output can be downloaded from. [More about the Audio Research Laboratory].

RF and microwave research laboratory

This laboratory is equipped with a wide range of specialised equipment for radio-frequency measurement and testing including network analysers (6 GHz, 40 GHz, 75 GHz), a scalar analyser, a spectrum analyser, antenna test facilities (4 to 20 GHz), and power metres (low frequency to 60 GHz). There is also a powerful microscope and a computer-controlled scanner for material evaluation.

Commercial software used in the laboratory includes ADS, HFSS, TLM, and Microwave Studio, and there is also in-house developed custom software for filter design. The laboratory makes use of the printed circuit milling facility (see above) for the production of microstrip circuits.

Terahertz laboratory

This laboratory is concerned with the design, simulation and testing of high speed semiconductor lasers and with many aspects of THz technology. In the area of high speed semiconductor lasers the laboratory is internationally recognised for its experimental work on gain switched lasers, multi-section lasers, external cavity lasers as well as for its design and simulation work in all these laser areas. In THz technology the laboratory is working on femtosecond laser pulse activated THz generators, THz spectroscopy, and compact semiconductor laser based THz sources.