ECE Final Report Guidelines

The final report is significantly more complete than the incremental reports produced for each MP to date. The purposes of the document are: 1.) to provide a conclusive summary of your ECE 412 final project, 2.) to instruct you in the expected format of future project reports, whether in an industrial or academic setting.

Each partner should keep a copy for the document so that it can serve as sample work during a job interview as well as a template for future reports expected throughout your career. You should strive to acquire a portfolio of example designs you have produced; the material will provide substance during annual job reviews, compensation and promotion evaluations, and future job transitions.

Sections

Each group's report will consist of a written description of the work accomplished, as well as an appendix of the design files and CDROM of code, all enclosed in a suitable binder for protection.

This is the preferred arrangement, but is not an absolute standard.

1. Title Page (one page)
   Single page with the project title centered in all caps. The next line is the full name of each partner, and under that "ECE412 Final Project Report" and the date.

2. Abstract (one-half to one page)
   Synopsis of the project. Describe the problem, the solution, the work undertaken, the the conclusions.

3. Acknowledgments (one-half page)
   Always you should credit your benefactors and sources. In this class, you should recognize and thank:
   
   • Compaq Corporation (now Hewlett-Packard) for the donation of the iPAQs,
   • Hewlett-Packard (now Agilent) for the donation of the test equipment,
   • Intel Corporation for the donation of the computers,
   • Mentor Graphics Corporation and Xilinx, Inc. for the donation of design software.
   Please also recognize any extra effort on behalf of the TAs, ECE shop, external code repositories and sources. Always credit any previous work you may be building on; there are legal ramifications if you do not.

4. Table of Contents (one page)
   Listing of chapter titles and page numbers, including all items on this list except the title page.

5. Overview/Introduction Chapter (one to three pages)
   Describe briefly the project. Include the problem, motivation, solution and goals, approach, and implementation.

6. Related Work (one to three pages)
   Discuss the state-of-the-art at present, and any work or approaches which have gone before. (In an academic paper, this would include relevant publications, but is not likely to be the case here.) It is useful to at least describe the way the problem has been dealt with up until now.

7. Approach (body of report)
   May be several chapters, for example Design, Hardware Components, Support Software, System Integration , that fully describe your project. Screenshots are good, as are block diagrams. VHDL does not belong here, but goes into the Appendix. FSM diagrams and any on-screen output of HDLdesigner along with descriptive text is good.

8. Summary/Conclusions (one to three pages)
   This is where your results are presented. State the difficulties encountered and how they were dealt with. Discuss whether your approach was justified after all, and any possible directions for future exploration and expansion of the idea. Any graphical data produced belongs here.

9. Appendix
   Any support schematics and VHDL. It is required that you include a complete listing of all code written. Use courier font for this, and organize it into sections for readability.

Tips

• Don't use superlatives, in general: fantastic, amazing, incredible are not appropriate sentiments. Save that effort for the public relations department, and stay with factual, unbiased presentation.
• Personal impressions are not relevant I really had fun, This was really hard, I hate Microsoft... are all probably true, they just have no place in a technical document.
• Spellcheck, always. Don't trust the software; have another person evaluate the usage of any spelling and grammar manually.
• Use third person. It is difficult in such a project, but refrain from using personal pronouns like "I", "he", "she", "we" and instead refer to "it","the project","the work", or "this effort".
• Consider writing the abstract and possibly conclusions last, when they are most obvious to you and clear in your head.

Previous Semester's Examples

• An example of a Final Project Design Document
• An example of a Final Project Report

Last updated 1/17/2007 2:04:37 PM