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K-State is the land-grant university in the Kansas, with an enrollment of approximately 20,000 students. The K-State College of Engineering offers BS, MS, and PhD degrees and enrolls over 3000 students, with approximately 600 within the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) field. The ECE department has a strong hands-on emphasis, with the majority of its 20 full-time faculty having industry experience. Students taking courses in the communications area benefit from this experience through a sequence of laboratory experiences in which they design, build, test, and document complete receivers at VHF and microwave frequencies each semester, while those in the VLSI field benefit from in-house fabrication equipment and use industry-standard design automation tools, including Agilent ADS and the full Cadence design suite.
The K-State ECE department communications laboratories maintain excellent equipment used by both the teaching and research missions. Existing equipment covers DC through microwave frequencies and includes HP4195, 8592L, and E4402B spectrum analyzers, HP8753A and 8753E vector network analyzers, HP8508 vector voltmeters with active probes, HP8648C signal generators, HP346 noise source, and an extensive collection of mixers, directional couplers, attenuators, etc. The lab also maintains an LPKF PCB milling machine for in-house RF PCB fabrication, SMD assembly equipment, and IC probing equipment for test/debug including a MicroManipulator probe station, Cascade Microtech and Signatone micropositioners, Cascade and GGB probes (18 Ghz GSG, 40 Ghz differential GSSG, and model-10 high-Z analog), and necessary calibration substrates.