DRDO CEPTAM 2025 Syllabus: Check Topic-wise and Exam Pattern Here

DRDO Syllabus 2025: The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) releases the syllabus for various posts on their official website. The DRDO syllabus will help candidates willing to apply for DRDO posts to have a proper idea of the exam and the important topics on which they need to focus on. Referring to the syllabus also ensures that candidates have an effective study plan and prepare for the exam well.

The DRDO exam 2025 is a national level entrance exam that is conducted by DRDO and the Ministry of Defence for the position of Junior Research Fellows. Having an effective DRDO preparation is important because of the difficulty level of the exam and the DRDO syllabus provided in this article will do just that. This article has also provided the DRDO exam pattern along with the syllabus. Read on to know more about the topic.

DRDO Syllabus Exam Pattern 2025

Before getting into the details RAC DRDO Syllabus, let’s have an overview of DRDO RAC Exam Pattern in order to get an idea about the paper pattern and section-wise distribution of marks:

Note – 

1. The written examination will be of descriptive type.
2. The descriptive test consists of two papers of 300 marks each, which will be  conducted in two sessions.
3. The duration of each session is of three hours each.
4. The syllabus of the Descriptive Examination (downloadable from the RAC website) is similar to the Engineering Services Examination (Main) in the relevant discipline conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).
5. The Descriptive Examination will be administered in a paper-based format. That is in offline mode.

DRDO Syllabus For Mechanical Engineering/ME

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for ME or Mechanical Engineering are listed below:

RAC DRDO Syllabus For ME – Descriptive Paper 1

• Fluid Mechanics: Basic Concepts and Properties of Fluids, Manometry, Fluid Statics, Buoyancy, Equations of Motion, Bernoulli’s equation and applications, Viscous flow of incompressible fluids, Laminar and Turbulent flows, Flow through pipes and head losses in pipes.
• Thermodynamics and Heat transfer: Thermodynamic systems and processes; properties of pure substance; Zeroth, First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics; Entropy, Irreversibility and availability; analysis of thermodynamic cycles related to energy conversion: Rankine, Otto, Diesel and Dual Cycles; ideal and real gases; compressibility factor; Gas mixtures. Modes of heat transfer, Steady and unsteady heat conduction, Thermal resistance, Fins, and forced convection, Correlations for convective heat transfer, Radiative heat transfer – Radiation heat transfer co-efficient; boiling and condensation, Heat exchanger performance analysis.
• IC Engines, Refrigeration and Air conditioning: SI and CI Engines, Engine Systems and Components, Performance characteristics and testing of IC Engines; Fuels; Emissions and Emission Control. Vapour compression refrigeration, Refrigerants and Working cycles, Compressors, Condensers, Evaporators and Expansion devices, Other types of refrigeration systems like Vapour Absorption, Vapour jet, thermoelectric and Vortex tube refrigeration. Psychometric properties and processes, Comfort chart, Comfort and industrial air conditioning, Load calculations and Heat pumps.
• Turbo Machinery: Reciprocating and Rotary pumps, Pelton wheel, Kaplan and Francis Turbines, velocity diagrams, Impulse and Reaction principles, Steam and Gas Turbines, Theory of Jet Propulsion – Pulse jet and Ram Jet Engines, Reciprocating and Rotary Compressors – Theory and Applications
• Power Plant Engineering: Rankine and Brayton cycles with regeneration and reheat, Fuels and their properties, Flue gas analysis, Boilers, steam turbines and other power plant components like condensers, air ejectors, electrostatic precipitators and cooling towers – their theory and design, types and applications;
• Renewable Sources of Energy: Solar Radiation, Solar Thermal Energy collection – Flat Plate and focusing collectors their materials and performance. Solar Thermal Energy Storage, Applications – heating, cooling and Power Generation; Solar Photovoltaic Conversion; Harnessing of Wind Energy, Bio-mass and Tidal Energy – Methods and Applications, Working principles of Fuel Cells.

RAC DRDO Syllabus For ME – Descriptive Paper 2

• Engineering Mechanics: Analysis of System of Forces, Friction, Centroid and Centre of Gravity, Dynamics; Stresses and Strains-Compound Stresses and Strains, Bending Moment and Shear Force Diagrams, Theory of Bending Stresses- Slope and deflection-Torsion, Thin and thick Cylinders, Spheres.
• Engineering Materials: Basic Crystallography, Alloys and Phase diagrams, Heat Treatment, Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Metals, Non-metallic materials, Basics of Nano-materials, Mechanical Properties and Testing, Corrosion prevention and control
• Mechanisms and Machines: Types of Kinematics Pair, Mobility, Inversions, Kinematic Analysis, Velocity and Acceleration Analysis of Planar Mechanisms, CAMs with uniform acceleration and retardation, cycloidal motion, oscillating followers; Vibrations –and forced vibration of undamped and damped SDOF systems, Transmissibility Ratio, Vibration Isolation, Critical Speed of Shafts. Gears – Geometry of tooth profiles, Law of gearing, Involute profile, Interference, Helical, Spiral and Worm Gears, Gear Trains- Simple, compound and Epicyclic; Dynamic Analysis – Slider – crank mechanisms, turning moment computations, balancing of Revolving & Reciprocating masses, Gyroscopes –Effect of Gyroscopic couple on automobiles, ships and aircrafts, Governors.
• Design of Machine Elements: Design for static and dynamic loading; failure theories; fatigue strength and the S-N diagram; principles of the design of machine elements such as riveted, welded and bolted joints. Shafts, Spur gears, rolling and sliding contact bearings, Brakes and clutches, flywheels.
• Manufacturing, Industrial and Maintenance Engineering: Metal casting-Metal forming, Metal Joining, Machining and machine tool operations, Limits, fits and tolerances, Metrology and inspection, computer Integrated manufacturing, FMS, Production planning and Control, Inventory control and operations research – CPM-PERT. Failure concepts and characteristics-Reliability, Failure analysis, Machine Vibration, Data acquisition, Fault Detection, Vibration Monitoring, Field Balancing of Rotors, Noise Monitoring, Wear and Debris Analysis, Signature Analysis, NDT Techniques in Condition Monitoring.
• Mechatronics and Robotics: Microprocessors and Microcontrollers: Architecture, programming, I/O, Computer interfacing, Programmable logic controller. Sensors and actuators, Piezoelectric accelerometer, Hall effect sensor, Optical Encoder, Resolver, Inductosyn, Pneumatic and Hydraulic actuators, stepper motor, Control Systems- Mathematical modelling of Physical systems, control signals, controllability and observability. Robotics, Robot Classification, Robot Specification, notation; Direct and Inverse Kinematics; Homogeneous Coordinates and Arm Equation of four Axis SCARA Robot.

DRDO Syllabus For CSE/Computer Science and Engineering

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for Computer Science and Engineer are given below:

RAC DRDO Syllabus for CSE Descriptive Paper 1

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for Descriptive paper 1 are listed below:

• 1. Engineering Mathematics
• a. Linear Algebra: Matrices, Determinants, system of linear equations, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, LU decomposition, orthonormal bases, Transforms – Fourier, DCT, wavelets.
• b. Calculus:   Limits, continuity, differentiability, maxima and minima, mean value theorem, integration. Vector calculus – gradient, divergence, curl, integral theorems.
• c. Probability: Random variables, probability distributions – uniform, normal, exponential, Poisson, binomial.   Mean, median, mode, standard deviation. Conditional probability and Bayes theorem. Information theory: Shannon entropy, information, conditional information.
• 2.  Discrete Mathematics: Propositional and first-order logic. Sets, relations, functions, partial orders and lattices, groups. Graphs: connectivity, matching, colouring. Combinatorics: counting, recurrence relations, generating functions
• 3. Digital Logic: Boolean algebra.  Combinational and sequential circuits. Minimization. Number representation and computer arithmetic (fixed and floating-point).
• 4. Computer Organization and Architecture: Machine instructions and addressing modes. Assembly language.  ALU, data path and control unit. Instruction pipelining. Memory hierarchy: cache, main memory and secondary storage. I/O interface (interrupt and DMA modes).  RISC, CISC, parallel architectures.
• 5. Programming and Data Structures Programming in C: functions, structures, memory management, recursion, arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists, trees, binary search trees, binary heaps, graphs.  Object-oriented programming basics.
• 6. Algorithms: Searching, sorting, hashing. Asymptotic worst case, time and space complexity. Algorithm design techniques: greedy, dynamic programming and divide‐and‐conquer. Graph search, minimum spanning trees, shortest paths.

RAC DRDO Syllabus for CSE Descriptive Paper 2

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for Descriptive paper 2 are listed below:

• 1. Compiler design –  Lexical analysis, parsing, syntax‐directed translation. Runtime environments, intermediate code generation.
• 2. Operating System – Processes, threads, inter‐process communication, concurrency and synchronization, deadlocks. CPU scheduling. Memory management and virtual memory. File systems. Virtual machines and hypervisors. Secure operating systems.
• 3. Theory of Computation –  Regular expressions and finite automata. Context‐grammars and push‐down automata. Regular and context‐languages, pumping lemma.  Turing machines and undecidability.
• 4. Databases ER‐model – Relational model: relational algebra, tuple calculus, SQL.  Integrity constraints. Normal forms. File organization, indexing (eg, B and B+ trees).  Transactions and concurrency controls.
• 5. Computer Networks – Concept of layering, OSI model. LAN technologies (Ethernet). Flow and error control techniques, switching.  IPv4 / IPv6, routers and routing algorithms (distance vector, link state).  TCP/UDP and sockets, congestion control. Application layer protocols (DNS, SMTP, POP, FTP, HTTP).  Basics of WiFi.
• 6. Security of Cyber Systems – Cybersecurity principles, Kerberos, RADIUS, secure protocols (IPSec, SSH, SSL), basics of the public key and private key cryptography, hash functions, blockchains, digital signatures, certificates. Firewalls, intrusion detection systems, basics of IoT security and Cloud security. Threats, vulnerabilities, malicious software. Attacks: buffer overflow, DoS, DDoS, SQL injection, web application attacks
• 7. AI and Machine Learning –  Classification and clustering techniques, dimensionality reduction:  PCA, SVD. Correlation and regression analysis. Training and test data: over fitting, under fitting.  Search. Ontology. Decision trees. Artificial Neural networks: activation function, multi‐layer perceptron, deep learning. Application of artificial neural networks.

RAC DRDO Syllabus: Electronics And Communication Engineering/ECE

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for Electronics and Communication Engineering are given below:

RAC DRDO Syllabus for ECE Descriptive Paper 1

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for Descriptive paper 1 are listed below:

• 1. Basic Electronics Engineering: Basics of semiconductors; Diode/Transistor basics and characteristics; Diodes for different uses; Junction & Field Effect Transistors (BJTs, JFETs, MOSFETs); Transistor amplifiers of different types, oscillators and other circuits; Basics of Integrated Circuits (ICs); Bipolar, MOS and CMOS ICs; Basics of linear ICs, operational amplifiers and their applications-linear/non-linear; Optical sources/detectors; Basics of Optoelectronics and its applications.
• 2. Basic Electrical Engineering: DC circuits ohm’s & Kirchoff’s laws, mesh and nodal analysis, circuit theorems; Electromagnetism, Faraday’s & Lenz’s laws, induced EMF and its uses; Single-phase AC circuits; Transformers, efficiency; Basics-DC machines, induction machines, and synchronous machines; Electrical power sources- basics: hydroelectric, thermal, nuclear, wind, solar; Basics of batteries and their uses.
• 3. Materials Science: Electrical Engineering materials; Crystal structure & defects; Ceramic materials-structures, composites, processing and uses; Insulating laminates for electronics, structures, properties and uses; Magnetic materials, basics, classification, ferrites, Ferro/para-magnetic materials and components; Nano materials-basics, preparation, purification, sintering, nanoparticles and uses; Nano-optical/magnetic/electronic materials and uses; Superconductivity, uses.
• 4. Electronic Measurements and Instrumentation: Principles of measurement, accuracy, precision and standards; Analog and Digital systems for measurement, measuring instruments for different applications; Static/dynamic characteristics of measurement systems, errors, statistical analysis and curve fitting; Measurement systems for nonelectrical quantities; Basics of telemetry; Different types of transducers and displays; Data acquisition system basics.
• 5. Network Theory: Network graphs & matrices; Wye-Delta transformation; Linear constant coefficient differential equations- time-domain analysis of RLC circuits; Solution of network equations using Laplace transforms- frequency domain analysis of RLC circuits; 2-port network parameters-driving point & transfer functions; State equations for networks; Steady state sinusoidal analysis.
• 6. Analog and Digital Circuits: Small signal equivalent circuits of diodes, BJTS and FETs; Diode circuits for different uses; Biasing & stability of BJT & JFET amplifier circuits; Analysis/design of amplifier- single/multi-stage; Feedback& uses; Active filters, timers, multipliers, waveshaping, A/D-D/A converters; Boolean Algebra& uses; Logic gates, Digital IC families, Combinatorial/sequential circuits; Basics of multiplexers, counters/registers/ memories /microprocessors, design& applications.

RAC DRDO Syllabus for ECE Descriptive Paper 2

The RAC DRDO Syllabus for Descriptive paper 2 are listed below:

1. Analog and Digital Communication Systems: Random signals, noise, probability theory, information theory; Analog versus digital communication & applications: Systems- AM, FM, transmitters/receivers, theory/practice/ standards, SNR comparison; Digital communication basics: Sampling, quantizing, coding, PCM, DPCM, multiplexing-audio/video; Digital modulation: ASK, FSK, PSK; Multiple access: TDMA, FDMA, CDMA; Optical communication: fibre optics, theory, practice/standards.

2. Control Systems: Classification of signals and systems; Application of signal and system theory; System realization; Transforms& their applications; Signal flow graphs, Routh-Hurwitz criteria, mysqladmin loci, Nyquist/Bode plots; Feedback systems-open &close loop types, stability analysis, steady-state, transient and frequency response analysis; Design of control systems, compensators, elements of lead/lag compensation, PID and industrial controllers.

3. Computer Organization and Architecture: Basic architecture, CPU, I/O organisation, memory organisation, peripheral devices, trends; Hardware /software issues; Data representation& Programming; Operating systems-basics, processes, characteristics, applications; Memory management, virtual memory, file systems, protection & security; Databases, different types, characteristics and design; Transactions and concurrency control; Elements of programming languages, typical examples.

4. Electro Magnetics: Elements of vector calculus, Maxwell’s equations-basic concepts; Gauss’, Stokes’ theorems; Wave propagation through different media; Transmission Lines-different types, basics, Smith’s chart, impedance matching/transformation, S-parameters, pulse excitation, uses; Waveguides-basics, rectangular types, modes, cut-off frequency, dispersion, dielectric types; Antennas-radiation pattern, monopoles/dipoles, gain, arrays-active/passive, theory, uses.

5. Advanced Electronics Topics: VLSI technology: Processing, lithography, interconnects, packaging, testing; VLSI design: Principles, MUX/ROM/PLA-based design, Moore & Mealy circuit design; Pipeline concepts & functions; Design for testability, examples; DSP: Discrete-time signals/systems, uses; Digital filters: FIR/IIR types, design, speech/audio/radar signal processing uses; Microprocessors & microcontrollers, basics, interrupts, DMA, instruction sets, interfacing; Controllers & uses; Embedded systems.

6. Advanced Communication Topics: Communication networks; Principles /practices /technologies /uses /OSI model/security; Basic packet multiplexed streams/scheduling; Cellular networks, types, analysis, protocols (TCP/TCPIP); Microwave & satellite communication: Terrestrial/space type LOS systems, block schematics link calculations, system design; Communication satellites, orbits, characteristics, systems, use; Fibreoptic communication systems, block schematics, link calculations, system design.

FAQs

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