NTPC Syllabus for Executive Trainee- Discipline: Control & Instrumentation
Basics of Circuits and Measurement Systems:Kirchoffs laws, mesh and nodal Analysis. Circuit
theorems. One-port and two-port Network Functions. Static and dynamic characteristics of
Measurement Systems. Error and uncertainty analysis. Statistical analysis of data and curve
fitting.
Transducers, Mechanical Measurement and Industrial Instrumentation: Resistive,
Capacitive, Inductive and piezoelectric transducers and their signal conditioning. Measurement of
displacement, velocity and acceleration (translational and rotational), force, vibration and shock.
Measurement of pressure, flow, temperature and liquid level. Measurement of pH, conductivity,
humidity, hydrazine, silica, dissolved O2. Units and standards of measurement.
Analog Electronics: Characteristics of diode, BJT, JFET and MOSFET. Diode circuits. Transistors at
low and high frequencies, Amplifiers, single and multi-stage. Feedback amplifiers. Operational
amplifiers, characteristics and circuit configurations. Instrumentation amplifier. Precision rectifier.
V-to-I and I-to-V converter. Op-Amp based active filters. Oscillators and signal generators. Voltage
stabiliser and regulator circuits. Inverter and converter circuits.
Digital Electronics: Combinational logic circuits, minimization of Boolean functions. IC families,
TTL, MOS and CMOS. Arithmetic circuits. Comparators, Schmitt trigger, timers and mono-stable
multi-vibrator. Sequential circuits, flip-flops, counters, shift registers. Multiplexer, S/H circuit.
Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog converters. Basics of number system. Microprocessor
applications, memory and input-output interfacing. Microcontrollers.
Signals and Systems: Definitions and properties of Laplace transform, continuous-time and
discrete-time Fourier series, continuous-time and discrete-time Fourier Transform, DFT and FFT, ztransform. Sampling theorem. Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) Systems: definitions and properties;
causality, stability, impulse response, convolution, poles and zeros, parallel and cascade structure,
frequency response, group delay, phase delay. Signal transmission through LTI systems.
Communications: Random signals and noise: probability, random variables, probability density
function, autocorrelation, power spectral density. Analog communication systems: amplitude and
angle modulation and demodulation systems, spectral analysis of these operations,
superheterodyne receivers; elements of hardware, realizations of analog communication systems;
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) calculations for amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation
(FM) for low noise conditions. Fundamentals of information theory and channel capacity theorem.
Digital communication systems: pulse code modulation (PCM), differential pulse code modulation
(DPCM), digital modulation schemes: amplitude, phase and frequency shift keying schemes (ASK,
PSK, FSK), matched filter receivers, bandwidth consideration and probability of error calculations
for these schemes. Basics of TDMA, FDMA and CDMA and GSM. Basic Network topology and Net
work hard wares. LAN / WAN configurations. UTP and OFC Links and components. Serial and
parallel communication, Shielding and grounding. IEEE standards and broadband.
Electrical and Electronic Measurements: Bridges and potentiometers, measurement of R,L and
C. Measurements of voltage, current, power, power factor and energy. A.C & D.C current probes.
Extension of instrument ranges. Q-meter and waveform analyzer. Digital voltmeter and multimeter. Time, phase and frequency measurements. Cathode ray oscilloscope. Instrument
Transformer.
Control Systems and Process Control: Feedback principles. Signal flow graphs. Transient
Response, steady-state-errors. Routh and Nyquist criteria. Bode plot, root loci. Time delay
systems. Phase and gain margin. State space representation of systems. Mechanical, hydraulic and
pneumatic system components. Synchro pair, servo and step motors. On-off, cascade, P, P-I, P-ID, feed forward and derivative controller, Fuzzy controllers. Multi-state variable and Adaptative
controls. System modeling, Digital controls, Distributed digital controls, control loops based on
computers.
Analytical, Optical and Biomedical Instrumentation: Mass spectrometry. UV, visible and IR
spectrometry. X-ray and nuclear radiation measurements. Optical sources and detectors, LED,
laser, Photo-diode, photo-resistor and their characteristics. Interferometers, applications in
metrology.
