TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING GUIDE FOR UNDERGRADUATE PROJECT

A technical report is often written to communicate technical information particularly as a

consequence of project design and implementation. A typical project is your final year project.
Some of the essentials of such a report are outlined in the following sections.

Cover: The front cover page shall bear the information illustrated by the following example: The text sh all be
arranged symmetrically on the front cover. No use of logo is permitted on the cover page.
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DESIGN OF SLIDING MODE ORBIT CONTROLLERS
FOR COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES
BY

DANJUMA OGENE USMAN

(MATRIC NO)
AUGUST 2005
<This shall be arranged symmetrically to occupy the whole front cover>
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The preliminary pages: These shall be numbered in lower case Roman numerals starting with the title page e.g. i,
ii, iii, iv, v, etc. Usually the title page number is suppressed. Apart from the title page, text on all other pages sh all
be double-line spaced and in Times New Roman 12-point font. The pages shall be arranged in the following order:
i) Title Page
ii) Declaration
iii) Certification
iv) Dedication (if any)
v) Acknowledgements
vi) Abstract
vii) Table of Contents
viii) List of Figures
ix) List of Tables
x) List of Symbols and Abbreviations
Items (ii)-(x) above are page titles and therefore each shall start on a new page, written in capital letters and centred
on the page. The page contents, however, shall be left and right justified.
A sample of the Title Page is shown below:
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DESIGN OF SLIDING MODE ORBIT CONTROLLERS
FOR COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES

DANJUMA OGENE USMAN

(MATRIC NO)

A PROJECT REPORT SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL & INFORMA TION

ENGINEERING, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE
BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING DEGREE (COMPUTER ENGINEERING/ INFORMATION &
COMMUNICA TIONS TECHNOLOGY/ ELETRICAL&ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING).

SUPERVISOR: PROF. JAMES LUTAYA -KAMYA (indicate the title and name of your supervisor here)
AUGUST 2005
i (suppress the first page number)
<The contents of the title page shall be arranged to fill up the entire page symmetrically>.

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The declaration page shall be written as illustrated below:
DECLARATION
I hereby declare that I carried out the work reported in this thesis in the Department of Electrical &
Information Engineering, Covenant University, under the supervision of Prof. James Lutaya-Kamya (give
the name of your supervisor). I also solemnly declare that to the best of my knowledge, no part of
this report has been submitted here or elsewhere in a previous application for award of a degree. All
sources of knowledge used have been duly acknowledged.
………………(signature and date)……………………………………
DANJUMA OGENE USMAN
(MATRIC NO)

ii
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The Certification page shall be written as illustrated below:

CERTIFICATION
This is to certify that the thesis titled “Design of sliding mode orbit controllers for communications
satellites” by Danjuma Ogene Usman, (give full name ) meets the requirements and regulations
governing the award of the Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering/ICTl) degree of Covenant
University and is approved for its contribution to knowledge and literary presentation.
Supervisor: Sign: __________________ ____________
Name: PROF. J. LUTAYA-KAMYA Date

Internal Examiner: Sign: __________________ ____________

Name: _________________ Date

External Examiner: Sign: __________________ ____________

Name:_________________ Date

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Notes:
➢ The Dedication page is optional
➢ A person or persons to whom the thesis is dedicated need not be mentioned on the
Acknowledgements page.
➢ The Abstract shall be a concise statement of the research problem, methodology, and major
results of the study in no more than 300 words.
➢ Subsections of chapter sections shall be indented away from the left margin in the Table of
Contents. The List of Figures and List of Tables shall provide both captions and page
numbers. The List of Symbols and Abbreviations shall not provide page numbers where they
are used in the body of the thesis but shall indicate the meaning and units of the symbols where
applicable.
The main body of the thesis: This shall be broken into numbered chapters with appropriate titles:
1.
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Literature Review (A more specific title may be given)
2.
3.
Chapter Three: System design
4.
Chapter Four: System implementation and Testing
5.
Chapter Five: Conclusions
References
Appendices (if any)
Pages in the main body shall be numbered sequentially using Arabic numerals, starting from page 1.

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Notes:
➢ Each chapter shall be divided into titled subsections numbered according to the chapter number
(e.g. in Chapter One: INTRODUCTION, the subsections are: 1.1 Introduction;1.2 Significance and
Motivation for the Study; 1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study; 1.4 Methodology; 1.5 Thesis
Organization
➢ Except for chapter one, each chapter shall have introduction and conclusion subsections. The
introduction shall be the first subsection and tells the reader what the chapter is going to
present. The conclusion shall be the last subsection and is a brief summary of what the chapter
has presented.
➢ Subsections of a section in a chapter shall be titled and numbered according to section numbers:
(e.g. subsections of section 2.2 in chapter 2 shall be numbered as 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, etc.) It is
not advisable to create a single subsection out of a section of a chapter.
➢ Illustrations in form of diagrams or figures shall be provided in the text to enhance
understanding of the presentation. Each figure or illustration shall have a meaningful caption.
Figure captions are numbered sequentially in accordance with the Chapter number. The caption
shall be located at the bottom of the figure as illustrated for Fig. 3.1 below. This is the first figure
in chapter three, the next figure shall be Fig. 3.2, followed by Fig. 3.3 in that order. You may
decide not to abbreviate the Figure, but you keep to either ‘Fig.’ or ‘Figure’ throughout the
report.

FFT Frequency
x(n) X(n) Y(n) Inverse
Processor spectrum y(n)
FFT
shaping
processor
processor
Fig. 3.1: Concept of digital filtering in the frequency domain using FFT methods.
➢ A figure shall be located after and as close as possible to where it is cited in the text.
➢ Free hand drawing and labelling of figures is not acceptable. Use computer graphics as much as
practicable to draw and label all illustrations. Microsoft Word, for example, has good facilities for
drawing illustrations.
➢ Equations in the text shall be written using an equation editor in your word processor.
Equations shall be numbered sequentially according to the chapter in which they are located for
ease of reference. Equation numbers shall be enclosed in parentheses and aligned toward the
right-hand margin. For example, in Chapter Two the equation numbers shall be (2.1), (2.2),
(2.3), etc. In the text equations are cited as illustrated in the following partial statements. “Using
eqn (2.8) in eqn. (2.4) gives. ….”. At the start of a sentence “eqn” shall be written in full
starting with capital “E”, e.g. “Equation (2.11) implies that the system is unstable and
…..”
➢ Each equation shall appear on its own line and shall be indented away from the left margin of the
text and no dotted line shall be between the equation and its number. e.g:.
x2 k1 − a1
= (2.1)
x1  + k 2 − a 2
d  L  L
 − = U (2.2)
dt    
➢ Chapter One: Introduction shall provide in flowing sentences and paragraphs: brief
background information about the subject of the thesis (supported by citing of relevant
literature); the motivation and therefore significance of the study; the aim and objectives of the
study; the methodology used to solve the problem; and the thesis outline and scope. Avoid one
sentence paragraphs.
➢ Chapter Two: Literature Review shall be devoted to a (critical) review of the technical and
academic literature on previous works on the subject of the thesis. The idea is to position the

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 current work with respect to existing works. Hence, candidates shall as much as possible avoid
research topics for which they cannot source technical/academic literature of previous works on
the subject.
➢ Chapters Three to Five : shall concentrate on the candidate’s own work. This may involve,
system description, modelling, design, and/or analysis; data collection and analysis; software
development; system simulation and/or implementation; comparison of different methods;
description of experimental procedures; and discussion of results. If it is a design chapter, then
after the introduction section (3.1), the next section should be 3.2 Design Specifications.
➢ Where there is need to tabulate data, proper tables shall be drawn. Each table shall have a
meaningful caption which is numbered according to the chapter number. Table captions appear
on top of the Table. e.g.

TABLE 2.1 Energy Storage Elements

ELEMENT ENERGY PHYSICAL VARIABLE ASSOCIATED WITH
STORED ENERGY STORAGE
Capacitor, C 0.5CV 2 Voltage, V , across the capacitor
Inductor, L 0.5Li2 Current, i , through the inductor coil
Mass, M 0.5Mv2 Velocity, v, of the moving mass
Spring, K 0.5Kx2 Extension, x , of the spring

➢ Where a physical construction or realization of a prototype is carried out, the contraption shall be
photographed using a digital camera. The picture(s) shall then be included in the relevant
chapter to complement the description of constructional details.
➢ The Concluding Chapter shall start with stating the major aim of the study, then summarise
the highlights of previous chapters, mention the achievements of the thesis and end with
recommendations for other possible investigations as a follow-up on where the study has
stopped. The conclusion shall be written in present perfect tense. E.g. “This study has
investigated the effect of integral control action on a system’s response”. The chapter should
normally comprise three sections, namely, Summary, Achievements, Recommendations.
➢ References: All materials used by the candidate shall be acknowledged by duly citing the
sources in the text of the thesis. The list of serially numbered references shall be made in the
order in which the references are cited in the text under the “References” section, which
immediately follows the concluding chapter of the thesis.
➢ All listed references shall be appropriately cited in the text by enclosing the corresponding
number in the list of references in square brackets. E.g.:
“On-off control is widely used in process industries due to its simplicity [1].
However, according to Katende [2] most industrial process control loops
employ the PID control algorithm. This is mainly due to the fact that the
algorithm is robust, gives acceptable performance and many empirical
techniques have been devised for on-line tuning of its parameters [3,4,5]
without the need to know the controlled process model.”
➢ Each listed journal article shall provide the name(s) of the author(s), the title of the work, the
title of the journal, volume number, year and page numbers of the article. Each listed text book,
shall provide also the publisher and city of publication but in this case page numbers are not
necessary. These and others are illustrated in the following examples:
REFERENCES
[1] Lawson, D.: "The challenge of computer algebra to engineering mathematics", Engineering
Science. and Education Journal, 1997, 6, (6), pp.228-232.
[2] Mitic, P. and Thomas, P.G.: "Pitfalls and limitations of computer algebra", Computers and
Education, 1994, 22, (4), pp.355-361.
[3] Biran, A. and Breiner, M., “MATLAB for Engineers”, Addison-Wesley, Harlow, England,
1995.

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 [4] http://www.mathworks.com: MATLAB the Language for Technical Computing, 1998.
[5] Rozsasi, R.: "The use of Mathematica programmed virtual experiment animations", in
Hibberd, S. and Mustoe, L. (Eds.): 'Mathematical Education of Engineers' , IMA Publications,
UK, 1997.
[6] Wamala I.: “A study of the field factor for cylindrical conductors”, unpublished M.Eng. thesis,
Bayero University, Kano, 2002
[7] Katende J.: “Linear systems theory”, unpublished M.Eng Lecture Notes, Bayero University, Kano,
2003.
➢ Appendices: This section shall contain information that can be removed from the main body of
the report without affecting the flow of material being presented. For example details of a
lengthy derivation of a formula may be put in an appendix while the results of the derivation are
retained and utilized in the main body. Manufacturers’ data for components and ICs may be put
in an Appendix. A long computer program source code may be relegated to an appendix while its
flow chart and comments on its functions are retained in the main body of the thesis. Tables of
data generated from experimental procedures may be put in an appendix while corresponding
graphs are retained and discussed in the main body of the thesis, etc. Appendices shall be
appropriately cited in the text. Each appendix shall have a title (e.g. Appendix A, Appendix B,
etc) and a brief statement on or explanation of what it presents. Each appendix shall start on a
new page.
➢ Thesis Format:
1. The thesis shall be written in English and shall not normally exceed 45,000 words in
length. Avoid use of pronouns such as “I” and “We”. E.g, Instead of “We can show that
…”, use “It can be shown that …”. Watch your tenses.
2. All copies of the thesis shall be in double-line spacing and typed in Times New Roman, 12
point font on one side of the paper only.
3. The size of the paper shall be A4.
4. Page margins shall be: 4cm left, 2.5 cm right, 2.5 cm top and 2.5 cm bottom.
5. Four neat hard cover bound copies of the thesis shall be submitted to the
coordinator after being duly signed by the candidate and the supervisor. The
coordinator may reject any copy that does not conform to above specifications.