University of Waterloo
200 University Ave W, Waterloo, ON
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Contact the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
ECE Students must pre-enrol in all elective courses.
Courses without sufficient numbers after pre-enrolment will be cancelled.
Note that enrolment in electives is not guaranteed if you do not pre-enrol. Pre-enrolment is used to find sufficiently large classrooms for all courses across all disciplines and failure to pre-enrol may result in a classroom that is smaller than the actual demand. Those Technical Electives that you are most interested in must therefore be listed first on your pre-enrolment form.
Each Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Undergraduate student must complete five technical electives (TEs). Of those five courses:
- At least three must be approved ECE NNN courses,
- At most two may be 2nd- or 3rd-year courses (ECE 2NN and ECE 3NN) from the other ECE program as approved below, and
- At most two may be taken from other departments (usually engineering) as approved below.
Due to resource limitations or limited enrollment, it may be necessary to cancel some offerings of certain 4th-year Technical Electives. Students should pre-enrol in all technical electives at the appropriate time.
List of 4A (Spring) Technical Electives
Current as of Spring 2021
List of 4B (Winter) Technical Electives
Current as of Winter 2021
It must be noted that ECE 403, ECE 404, and ECE 405 (cross-listed with PHYS 358, 233, and 256, respectively) do not count as technical electives; they are List-1 Natural Science Electives (NSEs).
Other ECE courses acceptable as technical electives for
electrical engineering students
Two of the following courses may be used as Technical Electives for electrical engineering students:
- ECE 224 Embedded Microprocessor Systems
- ECE 327 Digital Hardware Systems
- ECE 351 Compilers
- ECE 356 Database Systems
- ECE 358 Computer Networks
- ECE 484 Digital Control Applications
Other ECE courses acceptable as technical electives for
computer engineering students
Two of the following courses may be used as technical electives for computer engineering students:
- ECE 331 Electronic Devices
- ECE 361 Power Systems
- ECE 375 Electromagnetic Fields and Waves
- ECE 484 Digital Control Applications
Taking Technical Electives in Terms other than 4A and 4B
Some courses (for example, ECE 428) are taught outside of their scheduled 4th-year Academic Terms as a service to other programs. If, for example, a student who is in Waterloo during his or her sixth Co-op Work Term (between 4A and 4B) or possibly even between 3B and 4A if the student is in Stream 8, that student may consider taking available courses in Software Engineering, Mechatronics, or Nanotechnology, however, any such choice must be discussed with the appropriate Program Academic Advisor. Please contact the appropriate Program Advisor/Co-ordinator (Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering). Such courses will almost certainly require a Course Override Form signed by the Course Instructor to override prerequisites. This form must be submitted to the appropriate Program Advisor/Co-ordinator.
Approving alternate technical electives
If you would like to take a course and have it count as a TE but it does not appear below, you may request to have the course approved as a Technical Elective. Please fill in an Elective Approval Form and submit it to your Academic Advisor before you take the course.
Graduate-level TEs
If the course is a graduate-level ECE course, please consult with the Professor to ensure that the course is not equivalent to an already-existing 4th-year ECE course.
Note that graduate students usually take only two courses per term and that the work-load in each course can be commensurately higher. If you are not maintaining an excellent standing, you should seriously consider whether or not you require a particular graduate-level course for your technical electives.
Management science technical electives
Up to two of the five Management Science courses
- MSCI 331 Operations Research 1,
- MSCI 431 Operations Research 2,
- MSCI 432 Production and Operations Management,
- MSCI 444 Information Systems Analysis and Design (for EE students only), or
- MSCI 452 Decision Making Under Uncertainty
may be used to satisfy your maximum of two 4th-year non-ECE TEs. These are often taken by students completing the Management Science option. Please note that CO 250 Introduction to Optimization may be used in place of MSCI 331 in order to satisfy the Management Science option.
List of pre-approved alternate technical electives
The courses listed in Table 2 show all other non-ECE courses which have, in the past, been used as Technical Electives. You do not have to seek approval to have these counted as your allowed non-ECE technical electives. You may need to fill in a Course Override Form to be admitted into these courses, as you may need the Professor's approval.
- ACTSC/STAT 446 Mathematical Models in Finance
- BME 487-T1 Special Topics on Biomedical signals (Currently, only the course on ultrasound is approved)
- CHE 522 Advanced Process Dynamics and Control
- CHE 524 Process Control Laboratory
- CIVE 460 Orthopaedic Bioengineering
- CO 250 Introduction to Optimization
- CO 342 Introduction to Graph Theory
- CO 456 Introduction to Game Theory
- CO 463 Convex Optimization and Analysis
- CO 466 Continuous Optimization
- CS 343 Concurrent and Parallel Programming
- CS 349 User Interfaces
- CS 442 Principles of Programming Languages
- CS 448 Database Systems Implementation
- CS 452 Real-time Programming
- CS 480 Introduction to Machine Learning
- CS 484 Computational Vision
- CS 485 Statistical and Computational Foundations of Machine Learning
-
CS 486 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
-
CS 488 Introduction to Computer Graphics
- ECON 405 Topics in Financial Econometrics
- ME 351 Fluid Mechanics 1
- ME 452 Energy Transfer in Buildings
- ME 459 Energy Conversion
- ME 547 Robot Manipulators: Kinematics, Dynamics, Control
- ME 597C Autonomous Mobile Robots
- MSCI 331 Operations Research 1
- MSCI 431 Operations Research 2
- MSCI 432 Production and Operations Management
- MSCI 435 Advanced Optimization Techniques
- MSCI 446 Data Mining
- MSCI 452 Decision Making Under Uncertainty
- MSCI 541 Search engines
- MSCI 546 Advanced Machine Learning
- MTE 544 Autonomous Mobile Robots
-
STAT 340 Stochastic Simulation Methods
- STAT 341 Computational Statistics and Data Analysis
- STAT 440 Computational Inference
- STAT 441 Statistical Learning - Classification
- STAT 444 Statistical Learning - Function Estimation
- SYDE 372 Introduction to Pattern Recognition
- SYDE 411 Optimization and Numerical Methods
- SYDE 422/522 Machine Intelligence
-
SYDE 531 Design Optimization Under Probabilistic Uncertainty
- SYDE 544 Biomedical Measurement and Signal Processing
- SYDE 542 Interface Design
- SYDE 552 Computational Neuroscience
- SYDE 556 Simulating Neurobiological Systems
- SYDE 572 Introduction to Pattern Recognition
- SYDE 575 Image Processing
Graduate Courses
A number of undergraduate students have opted at times to take graduate-level courses either as technical electives or as extra courses (possibly for graduate studies). These must be added through Course Override Forms, as a graduate course requires an override of the student's career. The following graduate-level courses may be appropriate for some ECE undergraduate students:
- ECE 662 Power Systems
- ECE 665 High Voltage Engineering Applications
- ECE 669 Dielectric Materials
- ECE 760 Topic 4 Operation Restructured Power Systems (prerequisite of ECE 467)
- ECE 765 Topic 4 Distribution Systems Engineering
- ECE 671 Microwave & RF Engineering
Please see the Schedule of Classes for Graduate Students, select ECE for the subject. To add such a course, you must fill in a Course Override Form and have the instructor sign it before you submit it to your Program Advisor/Co-ordinator. Courses where the Catalog Number ends in PD may not be taken as a technical electives under any circumstances.
Courses NOT Allowed as TEs
The following courses are not allowed as Technical Electives: ECON 3721, ECON 404, KIN 341, SCI 238, CS 241, CS 432, MSCI 454.
It must be noted that ECE 403, ECE 404, and ECE 405 (cross-listed with PHYS 358, 233, and 256, respectively) do not count as technical electives; they are List-1 Natural Science Electives (NSEs).
Notes:
1 While ECON 372 is an antirequisite of STAT 446 (there is at least a 50% overlap), it is not at the same level as STAT 446 and consequently, may not be used as a TE.