Electronic engineering
Previously electrical engineering only used passive devices such as mechanical switches, resistors, inductors, and capacitors.
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) publishes electrical standards including those for electronics engineering.
[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.
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 following the invention of transistor by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain.
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.
A key consideration in the design of transmitters is their power consumption as this is closely related to their signal strength.
Aviation-telecommunication engineers include specialists who work on airborne avionics in the aircraft or ground equipment.
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 electronics engineering and physics; for example, radar guns use the Doppler effect to measure the speed of oncoming vehicles.
Development of embedded systems—systems made for specific tasks (e.g., mobile phones)—is also included in this field.
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.
Many UK universities also offer Master of Engineering (MEng) degrees at the graduate level.
The Doctor of Philosophy consists of a significant research component and is often viewed as the entry point to academia.
Certification allows engineers to legally sign off on plans for projects affecting public safety.
A degree in electronics generally includes units covering physics, chemistry, mathematics, project management and specific topics in electrical engineering.
Fundamental to the discipline are the sciences of physics and mathematics as these help to obtain both a qualitative and quantitative description of how such systems will work.
[6][7] The huge breadth of electronics engineering has led to the use of a large number of specialists supporting knowledge areas.
Elements of vector calculus: divergence and curl; Gauss' and Stokes' theorems, Maxwell's equations: differential and integral forms.
Plane waves: propagation through various media; reflection and refraction; phase and group velocity; skin depth.
Network theorems: superposition, Thevenin and Norton's maximum power transfer, Wye-Delta transformation.
Linear constant coefficient differential equations; time domain analysis of simple RLC circuits, Solution of network equations using Laplace transform: frequency domain analysis of RLC circuits.
Logic gates digital IC families (DTL, TTL, ECL, MOS, CMOS).
Tools and techniques for LTI control system analysis and design: root loci, Routh–Hurwitz stability criterion, Bode and Nyquist plots.
Linearization of Nonlinear dynamical systems with state-space realizations in both frequency and time domains.
A lot of time is also spent on tasks such as discussing proposals with clients, preparing budgets and determining project schedules.
Most engineering projects involve some form of documentation and strong written communication skills are therefore very important.
