[34]

nd achieve new objectives.

In 1948, Claude Shannon published "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" which

mathematically describes the passage of information with uncertainty (electrical noise).

Solid-state electronics[edit]

See also: History of electronic engineering, History of the transistor, Invention of the
integrated circuit, MOSFET, and Solid-state electronics

A replica of the first working transistor, a point-contact transistor

Metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), the basic building block of modern

electronics

The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen and
Walter Houser Brattain while working under William Shockley at the Bell Telephone
[35]
Laboratories (BTL) in 1947. They then invented the bipolar junction transistor in
[36]
1948. While early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult
[37]
to manufacture on a mass-production basis, they opened the door for more compact
[38]
devices.

The first integrated circuits were the hybrid integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby at
Texas Instruments in 1958 and the monolithic integrated circuit chip invented by Robert
[39]
Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959.

The MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor)

[40][41][42]
was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at BTL in 1959. It was the
first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide
[37] [43][44]
range of uses. It revolutionized the electronics industry, becoming the most
[41][45][46]
widely used electronic device in the world.

[41]
The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips. The
earliest experimental MOS IC chip to be fabricated was built by Fred Heiman and
[47]
Steven Hofstein at RCA Laboratories in 1962. MOS technology enabled Moore's law,
the doubling of transistors on an IC chip every two years, predicted by Gordon Moore in
[48]
1965. Silicon-gate MOS technology was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild in
[49]
1968. Since then, the MOSFET has been the basic building block of modern
[42][50][51]
electronics. The mass-production of silicon MOSFETs and MOS integrated
circuit chips, along with continuous MOSFET scaling miniaturization at an exponential
pace (as predicted by Moore's law), has since led to revolutionary changes in
[52]
technology, economy, culture and thinking.

The Apollo program which culminated in landing astronauts on the Moon with Apollo 11
in 1969 was enabled by NASA's adoption of advances in semiconductor electronic
[53][54]
technology, including MOSFETs in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP)
[55]
and silicon integrated circuit chips in the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).

The development of MOS integrated circuit technology in the 1960s led to the invention
[56][57]
of the microprocessor in the early 1970s. The first single-chip microprocessor was
[56]
the Intel 4004, released in 1971. The Intel 4004 was designed and realized by
[56]
Federico Faggin at Intel with his silicon-gate MOS technology, along with Intel's
[58]
Marcian Hoff and Stanley Mazor and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. The
microprocessor led to the development of microcomputers and personal computers, and
the microcomputer revolution.

Subfields[edit]
One of the properties of electricity is that it is very useful for energy transmission as well
as for information transmission. These were also the first areas in which electrical
engineering was developed. Today, electrical engineering has many subdisciplines, the
most common of which are listed below. Although there are electrical engineers who
focus exclusively on one of these subdisciplines, many deal with a combination of them.
Sometimes, certain fields, such as electronic engineering and computer engineering,
are considered disciplines in their own right.

Power and energy[edit]

Main articles: Power engineering and Energy engineering

The top of a power pole

Power & Energy engineering deals with the generation, transmission, and distribution of
[59]
electricity as well as the design of a range of related devices. These include
transformers, electric generators, electric motors, high voltage engineering, and power
electronics. In many regions of the world, governments maintain an electrical network
called a power grid that connects a variety of generators together with users of their
energy. Users purchase electrical energy from the grid, avoiding the costly exercise of
having to generate their own. Power engineers may work on the design and
[60]
maintenance of the power grid as well as the power systems that connect to it. Such
systems are called on-grid power systems and may supply the grid with additional
power, draw power from the grid, or do both. Power engineers may also work on
systems that do not connect to the grid, called off-grid power systems, which in some
cases are preferable to on-grid systems.

Telecommunications[edit]

Main article: Telecommunications engineering

Satellite dishes are a crucial component in the analysis of satellite information.

Telecommunications engineering focuses on the transmission of information across a

[61]
communication channel such as a coax cable, optical fiber or free space.
Transmissions across free space require information to be encoded in a carrier signal to
shift the information to a carrier frequency suitable for transmission; this is known as
modulation. Popular analog modulation techniques include amplitude modulation and
[62]
frequency modulation. The choice of modulation affects the cost and performance of
a system and these two factors must be balanced carefully by the engineer.

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
[63][64]
as this is closely related to their signal strength. Typically, if the power of the
transmitted signal is insufficient once the signal arrives at the receiver's antenna(s), the
information contained in the signal will be corrupted by noise, specifically static.

Control engineering[edit]

Main articles: Control engineering and Control theory

Control systems play a critical role in spaceflight.

Control engineering focuses on the modeling of a diverse range of dynamic systems

and the design of controllers that will cause these systems to behave in the desired
[65]
manner. To implement such controllers, electronics control engineers may use
electronic circuits, digital signal processors, microcontrollers, and programmable logic
controllers (PLCs). Control engineering has a wide range of applications from the flight
and propulsion systems of commercial airliners to the cruise control present in many
[66]
modern automobiles. It also plays an important role in industrial automation.

Control engineers often use feedback when designing control systems. For example, in
an automobile with cruise control the vehicle's speed is continuously monitored and fed
[67]
back to the system which adjusts the motor's power output accordingly. Where there
is regular feedback, control theory can be used to determine how the system responds
to such feedback.

Control engineers also work in robotics to design autonomous systems using control
algorithms which interpret sensory feedback to control actuators that move robots such
as autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones and others used in a variety of industries.
[68]

Electronics[edit]

Main article: Electronic engineering

Electronic components

Electronic engineering involves the design and testing of electronic circuits that use the
properties of components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, and
[60]
transistors to achieve a particular functionality. The tuned circuit, which allows the
user of a radio to filter out all but a single station, is just one example of such a circuit.
Another example to research is a pneumatic signal conditioner.

Prior to the Second World War, the subject was commonly known as radio engineering
and basically was restricted to aspects of communications and radar, commercial radio,
[60]
and early television. Later, in post-war years, as consumer devices began to be
developed, the field grew to include modern television, audio systems, computers, and
microprocessors. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the term radio engineering gradually gave
way to the name electronic engineering.

[69]
Before the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959, electronic circuits were
constructed from discrete components that could be manipulated by humans. These
discrete circuits consumed much space and power and were limited in speed, although
they are still common in some applications. By contrast, integrated circuits packed a
[70]
large number—often millions—of tiny electrical components, mainly transistors, into a
small chip around the size of a coin. This allowed for the powerful computers and other
electronic devices we see today.

Microelectronics and nanoelectronics[edit]

Main articles: Microelectronics, Nanoelectronics, and Chip design

Microprocessor

Microelectronics engineering deals with the design and microfabrication of very small
electronic circuit components for use in an integrated circuit or sometimes for use on
[71]
their own as a general electronic component. The most common microelectronic
components are semiconductor transistors, although all main electronic components
(resistors, capacitors etc.) can be created at a microscopic level.

Nanoelectronics is the further scaling of devices down to nanometer levels. Modern

devices are already in the nanometer regime, with below 100 nm processing having
[72]
been standard since around 2002.

Microelectronic components are created by chemically fabricating wafers of

semiconductors such as silicon (at higher frequencies, compound semiconductors like
gallium arsenide and indium phosphide) to obtain the desired transport of electronic
charge and control of current. The field of microelectronics involves a significant amount
of chemistry and material science and requires the electronic engineer working in the
[73]
field to have a very good working knowledge of the effects of quantum mechanics.

Signal processing[edit]

Main article: Signal processing

A Bayer filter on a CCD requires signal processing to get a red, green, and blue value at each
pixel.

[74]
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 or the modulation and
demodulation of signals for telecommunications. For digital signals, signal processing
may involve the compression, error detection and error correction of digitally sampled
[75]
signals.

Signal processing is a very mathematically oriented and intensive area forming the core
of digital signal processing and it is rapidly expanding with new applications in every
field of electrical engineering such as communications, control, radar, audio
engineering, broadcast engineering, power electronics, and biomedical engineering as
many already existing analog systems are replaced with their digital counterparts.
Analog signal processing is still important in the design of many control systems.

DSP processor ICs are found in many types of modern electronic devices, such as
[76]
digital television sets, radios, hi-fi audio equipment, mobile phones, multimedia
players, camcorders and digital cameras, automobile control systems, noise cancelling
headphones, digital spectrum analyzers, missile guidance systems, radar systems, and
telematics systems. In such products, DSP may be responsible for noise reduction,
speech recognition or synthesis, encoding or decoding digital media, wirelessly
transmitting or receiving data, triangulating positions using GPS, and other kinds of
[77]
image processing, video processing, audio processing, and speech processing.

Instrumentation[edit]

Main article: Instrumentation engineering

Flight instruments provide pilots with the tools to control aircraft analytically.

Instrumentation engineering deals with the design of devices to measure physical

[78]
quantities such as pressure, flow, and temperature. The design of such instruments
requires a good understanding of physics that often extends beyond electromagnetic
theory. For example, flight instruments measure variables such as wind speed and
altitude to enable pilots the control of aircraft analytically. Similarly, thermocouples use
the Peltier-Seebeck effect to measure the temperature difference between two points.
[79]

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
[80]
temperature remains constant. For this reason, instrumentation engineering is often
viewed as the counterpart of control.

Computers[edit]

Main article: Computer engineering

Supercomputers are used in fields as diverse as computational biology and geographic

information systems.

Computer engineering deals with the design of computers and computer systems. This
may involve the design of new hardware. Computer engineers may also work on a
system's software. However, the design of complex software systems is often the
[81]
domain of software engineering, which is usually considered a separate discipline.
Desktop computers represent a tiny fraction of the devices a computer engineer might
work on, as computer-like architectures are now found in a range of embedded devices
including video game consoles and DVD players. Computer engineers are involved in
[82]
many hardware and software aspects of computing. Robots are one of the
applications of computer engineering.

Photonics and optics[edit]

Main articles: Photonics and Optics

Photonics and optics deals with the generation, transmission, amplification, modulation,
detection, and analysis of electromagnetic radiation. The application of optics deals with
design of optical instruments such as lenses, microscopes, telescopes, and other
equipment that uses the properties of electromagnetic radiation. Other prominent
applications of optics include electro-optical sensors and measurement systems, lasers,
fiber-optic communication systems, and optical disc systems (e.g. CD and DVD).
Photonics builds heavily on optical technology, supplemented with modern
developments such as optoelectronics (mostly involving semiconductors), laser
systems, optical amplifiers and novel materials (e.g. metamaterials).

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Signal processing
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Computers
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Not to be confused with Electronic engineering.

A long row of disconnectors

Occupation

Names Electrical engineer

Activity Electronics, electrical circuits, electromagnetics, power

sectors engineering, electrical machines, telecommunication,
control systems, signal processing, optics, photonics, and
electrical substations

Description

Competenci Technical knowledge, management skills, advanced

es mathematics, systems design, physics, abstract thinking,
analytical thinking, philosophy of logic (see also Glossary of
electrical and electronics engineering)

Fields of Technology, science, exploration, military, industry and

society
employment

Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design,

and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics,
and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the
19th century after the commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and
electrical power generation, distribution, and use.

Electrical engineering is divided into a wide range of different fields, including computer
engineering, systems engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, radio-
frequency engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, photovoltaic cells,
electronics, and optics and photonics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other
engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations including hardware
engineering, power electronics, electromagnetics and waves, microwave engineering,
nanotechnology, electrochemistry, renewable energies, mechatronics/control, and
[a]
electrical materials science.

Electrical engineers typically hold a degree in electrical engineering, electronic or

electrical and electronic engineering. Practicing engineers may have professional
certification and be members of a professional body or an international standards
organization. These include the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering
and Technology (IET, formerly the IEE).

Electrical engineers work in a very wide range of industries and the skills required are
likewise variable. These range from circuit theory to the management skills of a project
manager. The tools and equipment that an individual engineer may need are similarly
variable, ranging from a simple voltmeter to sophisticated design and manufacturing
software.

History[edit]
Main article: History of electrical engineering

Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th century.
William Gilbert was a prominent early electrical scientist, and was the first to draw a
clear distinction between magnetism and static electricity. He is credited with
[1]
establishing the term "electricity". He also designed the versorium: a device that
detects the presence of statically charged objects. In 1762 Swedish professor Johan
Wilcke invented a device later named electrophorus that produced a static electric
charge. By 1800 Alessandro Volta had developed the voltaic pile, a forerunner of the
[2]
electric battery.

19th century[edit]
The discoveries of Michael Faraday formed the foundation of electric motor technology.

In the 19th century, research into the subject started to intensify. Notable developments
in this century include the work of Hans Christian Ørsted, who discovered in 1820 that
an electric current produces a magnetic field that will deflect a compass needle; of
William Sturgeon, who in 1825 invented the electromagnet; of Joseph Henry and
Edward Davy, who invented the electrical relay in 1835; of Georg Ohm, who in 1827
quantified the relationship between the electric current and potential difference in a
conductor; of Michael Faraday, the discoverer of electromagnetic induction in 1831; and
of James Clerk Maxwell, who in 1873 published a unified theory of electricity and
[3]
magnetism in his treatise Electricity and Magnetism.

In 1782, Georges-Louis Le Sage developed and presented in Berlin probably the

world's first form of electric telegraphy, using 24 different wires, one for each letter of the
alphabet. This telegraph connected two rooms. It was an electrostatic telegraph that
moved gold leaf through electrical conduction.

In 1795, Francisco Salva Campillo proposed an electrostatic telegraph system. Between

1803 and 1804, he worked on electrical telegraphy, and in 1804, he presented his
report at the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Salva's
electrolyte telegraph system was very innovative though it was greatly influenced by
and based upon two discoveries made in Europe in 1800—Alessandro Volta's electric
battery for generating an electric current and William Nicholson and Anthony Carlyle's
[4]
electrolysis of water. Electrical telegraphy may be considered the first example of
[5]
electrical engineering. Electrical engineering became a profession in the later 19th
century. Practitioners had created a global electric telegraph network, and the first
professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK and the US to
support the new discipline. Francis Ronalds created an electric telegraph system in
[6]
1816 and documented his vision of how the world could be transformed by electricity.
[7]
Over 50 years later, he joined the new Society of Telegraph Engineers (soon to be
renamed the Institution of Electrical Engineers) where he was regarded by other
[8]
members as the first of their cohort. By the end of the 19th century, the world had
been forever changed by the rapid communication made possible by the engineering
development of land-lines, submarine cables, and, from about 1890, wireless
telegraphy.

Practical applications and advances in such fields created an increasing need for
standardized units of measure. They led to the international standardization of the units
volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad, and henry. This was achieved at an international
[9]
conference in Chicago in 1893. The publication of these standards formed the basis
of future advances in standardization in various industries, and in many countries, the
[10]
definitions were immediately recognized in relevant legislation.

During these years, the study of electricity was largely considered to be a subfield of
physics since early electrical technology was considered electromechanical in nature.
The Technische Universität Darmstadt founded the world's first department of electrical
engineering in 1882 and introduced the first-degree course in electrical engineering in
[11]
1883. The first electrical engineering degree program in the United States was
started at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the physics department under
[12]
Professor Charles Cross, though it was Cornell University to produce the world's first
[13]
electrical engineering graduates in 1885. The first course in electrical engineering
was taught in 1883 in Cornell's Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic
[14]
Arts.

In about 1885, Cornell President Andrew Dickson White established the first
[15]
Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States. In the same year,
University College London founded the first chair of electrical engineering in Great
[16]
Britain. Professor Mendell P. Weinbach at University of Missouri established the
[17]
electrical engineering department in 1886. Afterwards, universities and institutes of
technology gradually started to offer electrical engineering programs to their students all
over the world.

During these decades the use of electrical engineering increased dramatically. In 1882,
Thomas Edison switched on the world's first large-scale electric power network that
provided 110 volts—direct current (DC)—to 59 customers on Manhattan Island in New
York City. In 1884, Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine allowing for more
efficient electric power generation. Alternating current, with its ability to transmit power
more efficiently over long distances via the use of transformers, developed rapidly in the
1880s and 1890s with transformer designs by Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and
Miksa Déri (later called ZBD transformers), Lucien Gaulard, John Dixon Gibbs and
William Stanley, Jr. Practical AC motor designs including induction motors were
independently invented by Galileo Ferraris and Nikola Tesla and further developed into
a practical three-phase form by Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Charles Eugene
[18]
Lancelot Brown. Charles Steinmetz and Oliver Heaviside contributed to the
[19][20]
theoretical basis of alternating current engineering. The spread in the use of AC
set off in the United States what has been called the war of the currents between a
George Westinghouse backed AC system and a Thomas Edison backed DC power
[21]
system, with AC being adopted as the overall standard.

Early 20th century[edit]

Guglielmo Marconi, known for his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission

During the development of radio, many scientists and inventors contributed to radio
technology and electronics. The mathematical work of James Clerk Maxwell during the
1850s had shown the relationship of different forms of electromagnetic radiation
including the possibility of invisible airborne waves (later called "radio waves"). In his
classic physics experiments of 1888, Heinrich Hertz proved Maxwell's theory by
transmitting radio waves with a spark-gap transmitter, and detected them by using
simple electrical devices. Other physicists experimented with these new waves and in
the process developed devices for transmitting and detecting them. In 1895, Guglielmo
Marconi began work on a way to adapt the known methods of transmitting and detecting
these "Hertzian waves" into a purpose built commercial wireless telegraphic system.
Early on, he sent wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles. In December
1901, he sent wireless waves that were not affected by the curvature of the Earth.
Marconi later transmitted the wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu,
[22]
Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2,100 miles (3,400 km).

Millimetre wave communication was first investigated by Jagadish Chandra Bose during
1894–1896, when he reached an extremely high frequency of up to 60 GHz in his
[23]
experiments. He also introduced the use of semiconductor junctions to detect radio
[24] [25][26]
waves, when he patented the radio crystal detector in 1901.
In 1897, Karl Ferdinand Braun introduced the cathode-ray tube as part of an
[27]
oscilloscope, a crucial enabling technology for electronic television. John Fleming
invented the first radio tube, the diode, in 1904. Two years later, Robert von Lieben and
[28]
Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the triode.

In 1920, Albert Hull developed the magnetron which would eventually lead to the
[29][30]
development of the microwave oven in 1946 by Percy Spencer. In 1934, the
British military began to make strides toward radar (which also uses the magnetron)
under the direction of Dr Wimperis, culminating in the operation of the first radar station
[31]
at Bawdsey in August 1936.

In 1941, Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first fully functional and
programmable computer using electromechanical parts. In 1943, Tommy Flowers
designed and built the Colossus, the world's first fully functional, electronic, digital and
[32][33]
programmable computer. In 1946, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Computer) of John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly followed, beginning the computing
era. The arithmetic performance of these machines allowed engineers to develop
[34]
completely new technologies and achieve new objectives.

In 1948, Claude Shannon published "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" which

mathematically describes the passage of information with uncertainty (electrical noise).

Solid-state electronics[edit]

See also: History of electronic engineering, History of the transistor, Invention of the
integrated circuit, MOSFET, and Solid-state electronics

A replica of the first working transistor, a point-contact transistor

Metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), the basic building block of modern
electronics

The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen and
Walter Houser Brattain while working under William Shockley at the Bell Telephone
[35]
Laboratories (BTL) in 1947. They then invented the bipolar junction transistor in
[36]
1948. While early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult
[37]
to manufacture on a mass-production basis, they opened the door for more compact
[38]
devices.

The first integrated circuits were the hybrid integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby at
Texas Instruments in 1958 and the monolithic integrated circuit chip invented by Robert
[39]
Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959.

The MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor)

[40][41][42]
was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at BTL in 1959. It was the
first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide
[37] [43][44]
range of uses. It revolutionized the electronics industry, becoming the most
[41][45][46]
widely used electronic device in the world.

[41]
The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips. The
earliest experimental MOS IC chip to be fabricated was built by Fred Heiman and
[47]
Steven Hofstein at RCA Laboratories in 1962. MOS technology enabled Moore's law,
the doubling of transistors on an IC chip every two years, predicted by Gordon Moore in
[48]
1965. Silicon-gate MOS technology was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild in
[49]
1968. Since then, the MOSFET has been the basic building block of modern
[42][50][51]
electronics. The mass-production of silicon MOSFETs and MOS integrated
circuit chips, along with continuous MOSFET scaling miniaturization at an exponential
pace (as predicted by Moore's law), has since led to revolutionary changes in
[52]
technology, economy, culture and thinking.
The Apollo program which culminated in landing astronauts on the Moon with Apollo 11
in 1969 was enabled by NASA's adoption of advances in semiconductor electronic
[53][54]
technology, including MOSFETs in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP)
[55]
and silicon integrated circuit chips in the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).

The development of MOS integrated circuit technology in the 1960s led to the invention
[56][57]
of the microprocessor in the early 1970s. The first single-chip microprocessor was
[56]
the Intel 4004, released in 1971. The Intel 4004 was designed and realized by
[56]
Federico Faggin at Intel with his silicon-gate MOS technology, along with Intel's
[58]
Marcian Hoff and Stanley Mazor and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. The
microprocessor led to the development of microcomputers and personal computers, and
the microcomputer revolution.

Subfields[edit]
One of the properties of electricity is that it is very useful for energy transmission as well
as for information transmission. These were also the first areas in which electrical
engineering was developed. Today, electrical engineering has many subdisciplines, the
most common of which are listed below. Although there are electrical engineers who
focus exclusively on one of these subdisciplines, many deal with a combination of them.
Sometimes, certain fields, such as electronic engineering and computer engineering,
are considered disciplines in their own right.

Power and energy[edit]

Main articles: Power engineering and Energy engineering

The top of a power pole

Power & Energy engineering deals with the generation, transmission, and distribution of
[59]
electricity as well as the design of a range of related devices. These include
transformers, electric generators, electric motors, high voltage engineering, and power
electronics. In many regions of the world, governments maintain an electrical network
called a power grid that connects a variety of generators together with users of their
energy. Users purchase electrical energy from the grid, avoiding the costly exercise of
having to generate their own. Power engineers may work on the design and
[60]
maintenance of the power grid as well as the power systems that connect to it. Such
systems are called on-grid power systems and may supply the grid with additional
power, draw power from the grid, or do both. Power engineers may also work on
systems that do not connect to the grid, called off-grid power systems, which in some
cases are preferable to on-grid systems.

Telecommunications[edit]

Main article: Telecommunications engineering

Satellite dishes are a crucial component in the analysis of satellite information.

Telecommunications engineering focuses on the transmission of information across a

[61]
communication channel such as a coax cable, optical fiber or free space.
Transmissions across free space require information to be encoded in a carrier signal to
shift the information to a carrier frequency suitable for transmission; this is known as
modulation. Popular analog modulation techniques include amplitude modulation and
[62]
frequency modulation. The choice of modulation affects the cost and performance of
a system and these two factors must be balanced carefully by the engineer.

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
[63][64]
as this is closely related to their signal strength. Typically, if the power of the
transmitted signal is insufficient once the signal arrives at the receiver's antenna(s), the
information contained in the signal will be corrupted by noise, specifically static.

Control engineering[edit]

Main articles: Control engineering and Control theory

Control systems play a critical role in spaceflight.

Control engineering focuses on the modeling of a diverse range of dynamic systems

and the design of controllers that will cause these systems to behave in the desired
[65]
manner. To implement such controllers, electronics control engineers may use
electronic circuits, digital signal processors, microcontrollers, and programmable logic
controllers (PLCs). Control engineering has a wide range of applications from the flight
and propulsion systems of commercial airliners to the cruise control present in many
[66]
modern automobiles. It also plays an important role in industrial automation.

Control engineers often use feedback when designing control systems. For example, in
an automobile with cruise control the vehicle's speed is continuously monitored and fed
[67]
back to the system which adjusts the motor's power output accordingly. Where there
is regular feedback, control theory can be used to determine how the system responds
to such feedback.

Control engineers also work in robotics to design autonomous systems using control
algorithms which interpret sensory feedback to control actuators that move robots such
as autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones and others used in a variety of industries.
[68]

Electronics[edit]
Main article: Electronic engineering

Electronic components

Electronic engineering involves the design and testing of electronic circuits that use the
properties of components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, and
[60]
transistors to achieve a particular functionality. The tuned circuit, which allows the
user of a radio to filter out all but a single station, is just one example of such a circuit.
Another example to research is a pneumatic signal conditioner.

Prior to the Second World War, the subject was commonly known as radio engineering
and basically was restricted to aspects of communications and radar, commercial radio,
[60]
and early television. Later, in post-war years, as consumer devices began to be
developed, the field grew to include modern television, audio systems, computers, and
microprocessors. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the term radio engineering gradually gave
way to the name electronic engineering.

[69]
Before the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959, electronic circuits were
constructed from discrete components that could be manipulated by humans. These
discrete circuits consumed much space and power and were limited in speed, although
they are still common in some applications. By contrast, integrated circuits packed a
[70]
large number—often millions—of tiny electrical components, mainly transistors, into a
small chip around the size of a coin. This allowed for the powerful computers and other
electronic devices we see today.

Microelectronics and nanoelectronics[edit]

Main articles: Microelectronics, Nanoelectronics, and Chip design

Microprocessor

Microelectronics engineering deals with the design and microfabrication of very small
electronic circuit components for use in an integrated circuit or sometimes for use on
[71]
their own as a general electronic component. The most common microelectronic
components are semiconductor transistors, although all main electronic components
(resistors, capacitors etc.) can be created at a microscopic level.

Nanoelectronics is the further scaling of devices down to nanometer levels. Modern

devices are already in the nanometer regime, with below 100 nm processing having
[72]
been standard since around 2002.

Microelectronic components are created by chemically fabricating wafers of

semiconductors such as silicon (at higher frequencies, compound semiconductors like
gallium arsenide and indium phosphide) to obtain the desired transport of electronic
charge and control of current. The field of microelectronics involves a significant amount
of chemistry and material science and requires the electronic engineer working in the
[73]
field to have a very good working knowledge of the effects of quantum mechanics.

Signal processing[edit]

Main article: Signal processing

A Bayer filter on a CCD requires signal processing to get a red, green, and blue value at each
pixel.

[74]
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 or the modulation and
demodulation of signals for telecommunications. For digital signals, signal processing
may involve the compression, error detection and error correction of digitally sampled
[75]
signals.

Signal processing is a very mathematically oriented and intensive area forming the core
of digital signal processing and it is rapidly expanding with new applications in every
field of electrical engineering such as communications, control, radar, audio
engineering, broadcast engineering, power electronics, and biomedical engineering as
many already existing analog systems are replaced with their digital counterparts.
Analog signal processing is still important in the design of many control systems.

DSP processor ICs are found in many types of modern electronic devices, such as
[76]
digital television sets, radios, hi-fi audio equipment, mobile phones, multimedia
players, camcorders and digital cameras, automobile control systems, noise cancelling
headphones, digital spectrum analyzers, missile guidance systems, radar systems, and
telematics systems. In such products, DSP may be responsible for noise reduction,
speech recognition or synthesis, encoding or decoding digital media, wirelessly
transmitting or receiving data, triangulating positions using GPS, and other kinds of
[77]
image processing, video processing, audio processing, and speech processing.

Instrumentation[edit]

Main article: Instrumentation engineering

Flight instruments provide pilots with the tools to control aircraft analytically.

Instrumentation engineering deals with the design of devices to measure physical

[78]
quantities such as pressure, flow, and temperature. The design of such instruments
requires a good understanding of physics that often extends beyond electromagnetic
theory. For example, flight instruments measure variables such as wind speed and
altitude to enable pilots the control of aircraft analytically. Similarly, thermocouples use
the Peltier-Seebeck effect to measure the temperature difference between two points.
[79]

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
[80]
temperature remains constant. For this reason, instrumentation engineering is often
viewed as the counterpart of control.

Computers[edit]

Main article: Computer engineering

Supercomputers are used in fields as diverse as computational biology and geographic

information systems.

Computer engineering deals with the design of computers and computer systems. This
may involve the design of new hardware. Computer engineers may also work on a
system's software. However, the design of complex software systems is often the
[81]
domain of software engineering, which is usually considered a separate discipline.
Desktop computers represent a tiny fraction of the devices a computer engineer might
work on, as computer-like architectures are now found in a range of embedded devices
including video game consoles and DVD players. Computer engineers are involved in
[82]
many hardware and software aspects of computing. Robots are one of the
applications of computer engineering.

Photonics and optics[edit]

Main articles: Photonics and Optics

Photonics and optics deals with the generation, transmission, amplification, modulation,
detection, and analysis of electromagnetic radiation. The application of optics deals with
design of optical instruments such as lenses, microscopes, telescopes, and other
equipment that uses the properties of electromagnetic radiation. Other prominent
applications of optics include electro-optical sensors and measurement systems, lasers,
fiber-optic communication systems, and optical disc systems (e.g. CD and DVD).
Photonics builds heavily on optical technology, supplemented with modern
developments such as optoelectronics (mostly involving semiconductors), laser
systems, optical amplifiers and novel materials (e.g. metamaterials).