Electronic engineering

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Printed circuit board

Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th
century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices
to amplify and control electric current flow. Previously electrical engineering only used passive devices
such as mechanical switches, resistors, inductors and capacitors.

It covers fields such as: analog electronics, digital electronics, consumer electronics, embedded systems
and power electronics. It is also involved in many related fields, for example solid-state physics, radio
engineering, telecommunications, control systems, signal processing, systems engineering, computer
engineering, instrumentation engineering, electric power control, robotics.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is one of the most important professional
bodies for electronics engineers in the US; the equivalent body in the UK is the Institution of Engineering
and Technology (IET). The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) publishes electrical standards
including those for electronic engineering.

Contents

1 History and development

2 Specialist areas

3 Education and training

3.1 Supporting knowledge areas

3.1.1 Electronic Control systems

3.1.2 Communications

4 Professional Bodies

5 Project engineering

6 See also

7 References
8 External links

History and development

Main article: History of electronic engineering

Main article: Electronics

Electronic engineering as a profession emerged following the identification of the electron in 1897 and
the subsequent invention of the vacuum tube which could amplify and rectify small electrical signals,
that inaugurated the field of electronics.[1] Practical applications started with the invention of the diode
by Ambrose Fleming and the triode by Lee De Forest in the early 1900s, which made the detection of
small electrical voltages such as radio signals from a radio antenna possible with a non-mechanical
device. The growth of electronics was rapid. By the early 1920s, commercial radio broadcasting and
communications were becoming widespread and electronic amplifiers were being used in such diverse
applications as long-distance telephony and the music recording industry.

The discipline was further enhanced by the large amount of electronic systems development during
World War II in such as radar and sonar, and the subsequent peace-time consumer revolution.

Specialist areas

Electronic engineering has many subfields. This section describes some of the most popular.

Electronic signal processing deals with the analysis and manipulation of signals. Signals can be either
analog, in which case the signal varies continuously according to the information, or digital, in which
case the signal varies according to a series of discrete values representing the information.

For analog signals, signal processing may involve the amplification and filtering of audio signals for audio
equipment and the modulation and demodulation of radio frequency signals for telecommunications.
For digital signals, signal processing may involve compression, error checking and error detection and
correction.

Telecommunications engineering deals with the transmission of information across a medium such as a
co-axial cable, an optical fiber or free space.Transmissions across free space require information to be
encoded in a carrier wave in order to be transmitted, this is known as modulation. Popular analog
modulation techniques include amplitude modulation and frequency modulation.

Once the transmission characteristics of a system are determined, telecommunication engineers design
the transmitters and receivers needed for such systems. These two are sometimes combined to form a
two-way communication device known as a transceiver. A key consideration in the design of
transmitters is their power consumption as this is closely related to their signal strength. If the signal
strength of a transmitter is insufficient the signal's information will be corrupted by noise.

Aviation-Electronic Engineering and Aviation-Telecommunications Engineering, are concerned with

aerospace applications. Aviation-telecommunication engineers include specialists who work on airborne
avionics in the aircraft or ground equipment. Specialists in this field mainly need knowledge of
computer, networking, IT and sensors. These courses are offered at such as Civil Aviation Technology
Colleges.[2][3]

Control engineering has a wide range of electronic applications from the flight and propulsion systems
of commercial airplanes to the cruise control present in many modern cars. It also plays an important
role in industrial automation. Control engineers often use feedback when designing control systems.

Instrumentation engineering deals with the design of devices to measure physical quantities such as
pressure, flow and temperature.The design of such instrumentation requires a good understanding of
electronic engineering and physics; for example, radar guns use the Doppler effect to measure the speed
of oncoming vehicles. Similarly, thermocouples use the Peltier–Seebeck effect to measure the
temperature difference between two points.

Often instrumentation is not used by itself, but instead as the sensors of larger electrical systems. For
example, a thermocouple might be used to help ensure a furnace's temperature remains constant. For
this reason, instrumentation engineering is often viewed as the counterpart of control engineering.[4]

Computer engineering deals with the design of computers and computer systems. This may involve the
design of new computer hardware, the design of PDAs or the use of computers to control an industrial
plant. Development of embedded systems—systems made for specific tasks (e.g., mobile phones)—is
also included in this field. This field includes the micro controller and its applications. Computer
engineers may also work on a system's software. However, the design of complex software systems is
often the domain of software engineering, which is usually considered a separate discipline.

VLSI design engineering VLSI stands for very large scale integration. It deals with fabrication of ICs and
various electronic components. In designing an integrated circuit, electronics engineers first construct
circuit schematics that specify the electrical components and describe the interconnections between
them. When completed, VLSI engineers convert the schematics into actual layouts, which map the layers
of various conductor and semiconductor materials needed to construct the circuit.