Electronic engineering

A collection of electronic devices.

Electronic engineering is a discipline that utilizes the behavior and effects of electrons for the production of electronic devices (such as electron tubes and transistors), systems, or equipment. In many parts of the world, electronic engineering is considered at the same level as electrical engineering, so that general programs are called electrical and electronic engineering. (Many UK and Turkish universities have departments of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.) Both define a broad field that encompasses many subfields including those that deal with power, instrumentation engineering, telecommunications, and semiconductor circuit design, amongst many others.



The name electrical engineering is still used to cover electronic engineering amongst some of the older (notably American) universities and graduates there are called electrical engineers.

Some believe the term electrical engineer should be reserved for those having specialized in power and heavy current or high voltage engineering, while others believe that power is just one subset of electrical engineering (and indeed the term power engineering is used in that industry). Again, in recent years there has been a growth of new separate-entry degree courses such as information and communication engineering, often followed by academic departments of similar name.

History of electronic engineering

The modern discipline of electronic engineering was to a large extent born out of radio and television development and from the large amount of Second World War development of defense systems and weapons. In the interwar years, the subject was known as radio engineering and it was only in the late 1950s that the term electronic engineering started to emerge. In the UK, the subject of electronic engineering became distinct from electrical engineering as a university degree subject around 1960. Students of electronics and related subjects like radio and telecommunications before this time had to enroll in the electrical engineering department of the university as no university had departments of electronics. Electrical engineering was the nearest subject with which electronic engineering could be aligned, although the similarities in subjects covered (except mathematics and electromagnetism) lasted only for the first year of the three-year course.

Early electronics

In 1893, Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio communication. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail the principles of radio communication. In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi went on to develop a practical and widely used radio system. In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming, the first professor of electrical Engineering at University College London, invented the first radio tube, the diode. One year later, in 1906, Robert von Lieben and Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the triode.

Electronics is often considered to have begun when Lee De Forest invented the vacuum tube in 1907 . Within 10 years, his device was used in radio transmitters and receivers as well as systems for long distance telephone calls. Vacuum tubes remained the preferred amplifying device for 40 years, until researchers working for William Shockley at Bell Labs invented the transistor in 1947. In the following years, transistors made small portable radios, or transistor radios, possible as well as allowing more powerful mainframe computers to be built. Transistors were smaller and required lower voltages than vacuum tubes to work.In the interwar years the subject of electronics was dominated by the worldwide interest in radio and to some extent telephone and telegraph communications. The terms "wireless" and "radio" were then used to refer anything electronic. There were indeed few non-military applications of electronics beyond radio at that time until the advent of television. The subject was not even offered as a separate university degree subject until about 1960.

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 and early television. At this time, study of radio engineering at universities could only be undertaken as part of a physics degree.

Later, in post war years, as consumer devices began to be developed, the field broadened to include modern TV, audio systems, Hi-Fi and latterly computers and microprocessors. In the mid to late 1950s, the term radio engineering gradually gave way to the name electronic engineering, which then became a stand alone university degree subject, usually taught alongside electrical engineering with which it had become associated due to some similarities.

Before the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959, electronic circuits were constructed from discrete components that could be manipulated by hand. These non-integrated circuits consumed much space and power, were prone to failure and were limited in speed although they are still common in simple applications. By contrast, integrated circuits packed a large number—often millions—of tiny electrical components, mainly transistors, into a small chip around the size of a coin.

Tubes or valves

The vacuum tube detector

The invention of the triode amplifier, generator, and detector made audio communication by radio practical. (Reginald Fessenden's 1906 transmissions used an electro-mechanical alternator.) The first known radio news program was broadcast 31 August 1920 by station 8MK, the unlicensed predecessor of WWJ (AM) in Detroit, Michigan. Regular wireless broadcasts for entertainment commenced in 1922, from the Marconi Research Centre at Writtle near Chelmsford, England.

While some early radios used some type of amplification through electric current or battery, through the mid 1920s the most common type of receiver was the crystal set. In the 1920s, amplifying vacuum tubes revolutionized both radio receivers and transmitters.

Phonographs and radiogrammes

This is the early name for record players or combined radios and record players that had some presence in the war of 1812.


In 1928, Philo Farnsworth made the first public demonstration of purely electronic television. During the 1930s, several countries began broadcasting, and after World War II, it spread to millions of receivers, eventually worldwide.

Ever since then, electronics have been fully present in television devices. Nowadays, electronics in television have evolved to be the basics of almost every component inside TVs.

One of the latest and most advance technologies in TV screens/displays has to do entirely with electronics principles, and it’s the LED (light emitting diode) displays, and it’s most likely to replace LCD and Plasma technologies.

Radar and radio location

During World War II, many efforts were expended in the electronic location of enemy targets and aircraft. These included radio beam guidance of bombers, electronic counter measures, early radar systems, and so on. During this time very little if any effort was expended on consumer electronics developments.


In 1941, Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first functional 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 completely new technologies and achieve new objectives. Early examples include the Apollo missions and the NASA moon landing.


The invention of the transistor in 1947, by William B. Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain opened the door for more compact devices and led to the development of the integrated circuit in 1959 by Jack Kilby.


In 1968, Marcian Hoff invented the microprocessor at Intel and, thus, ignited the development of the personal computer. Hoff's invention was part of an order by a Japanese company for a desktop programmable electronic calculator, which Hoff wanted to build as cheaply as possible. The first realization of the microprocessor was the Intel 4004, a 4-bit processor, in 1969, but only in 1973 did the Intel 8080, an 8-bit processor, make the building of the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800, possible.




Integrated circuits and other electrical components can then be assembled on printed circuit boards to form more complicated circuits. Today, printed circuit boards are found in most electronic devices including televisions, computers, and audio players.

Typical electronic engineering undergraduate syllabus

Apart from electromagnetics and network theory, other items in the syllabus are particular to electronics engineering course. Electrical engineering courses have other specialisms such as machines, power generation, and distribution. Note that the following list does not include the large quantity of mathematics (maybe apart from the final year) included in each year's study.


Elements of vector calculus: divergence and curl; Gauss' and Stokes' theorems, Maxwell's equations: Differential and integral forms. Wave equation, Poynting vector. Plane waves: Propagation through various media; reflection and refraction; phase and group velocity; skin depth. Transmission lines: characteristic impedance; impedance transformation; Smith chart; impedance matching; pulse excitation. Waveguides: Modes in rectangular waveguides; boundary conditions; cut-off frequencies; dispersion relations. Antennas: Dipole antennas; antenna arrays; radiation pattern; reciprocity theorem, antenna gain.

Network analysis

Network graphs: Matrices associated with graphs; incidence, fundamental cut set and fundamental circuit matrices. Solution methods: Nodal and mesh analysis. Network theorems: Superposition, Thevenin, and Norton's maximum power transfer, Wye-Delta transformation. Steady state sinusoidal analysis using phasors. 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. 2-port network parameters: Driving point and transfer functions. State equatioons for networks.

Electronic devices and circuits

Electronic Devices: Energy bands in silicon, intrinsic and extrinsic silicon. Carrier transport in silicon: Diffusion current, drift current, mobility, resistivity. Generation and recombination of carriers. p-n junction diode, Zener diode, tunnel diode, BJT, JFET, MOS capacitor, MOSFET, LED, p-I-n and avalanche photo diode, LASERs. Device technology: Integrated circuits fabrication process, oxidation, diffusion, ion implantation, photolithography, n-tub, p-tub and twin-tub CMOS process.

Analog Circuits: Equivalent circuits (large and small-signal) of diodes, BJTs, JFETs, and MOSFETs. Simple diode circuits, clipping, clamping, rectifier. Biasing and bias stability of transistor and FET amplifiers. Amplifiers: Single-and multi-stage, differential, operational, feedback and power. Analysis of amplifiers; frequency response of amplifiers. Simple op-amp circuits. Filters. Sinusoidal oscillators; criterion for oscillation; single-transistor and op-amp configurations. Function generators and wave-shaping circuits, Power supplies.

Digital circuits: of Boolean functions; logic gates digital IC families (DTL, TTL, ECL, MOS, CMOS). Combinational circuits: Arithmetic circuits, code converters, multiplexers and decoders. Sequential circuits: latches and flip-flops, counters and shift-registers. Sample and hold circuits, ADCs, DACs. Semiconductor memories. Microprocessor(8085): Architecture, programming, memory and I/O interfacing.

Signals and systems


Control systems


Tools and techniques for LTI control system analysis and design: Root loci, Routh-Hurwitz criterion, Bode and Nyquist plots. Control system compensators: Elements of lead and lag compensation, elements of Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control. Discretization of continuous time systems using Zero-Order-Hold (ZOH) and ADC's for digital controller implementation. Limitations of digital controllers: aliasing. State variable representation and solution of state equation of LTI control systems. Linearization of Nonlinear dynamical systems with state-space realizations in both frequency and time domains. Fundamental concepts of controllability and observability for MIMO LTI systems. State space realizations: observable and controllable canonical form. Ackerman's formula for state-feedback pole placement. Design of full order and reduced order estimators.


Analog communication (UTC) systems: Amplitude and angle modulation and demodulation systems, spectral analysis of these operations, superheterodyne noise conditions.


Education and training

Electronics engineers typically possess an academic degree with a major in electronic engineering. The length of study for such a degree is usually three or four years and the completed degree may be designated as a Bachelor of Engineering, Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Applied Science depending upon the university. Many UK universities also offer Master of Engineering (MEng) degrees at undergraduate level.

The degree generally includes units covering physics, mathematics, project management and specific topics in electrical engineering. Initially such topics cover most, if not all, of the subfields of electronic engineering. Students then choose to specialize in one or more subfields towards the end of the degree.


In most countries, a Bachelor's degree in engineering represents the first step towards certification and the degree program itself is certified by a professional body. After completing a certified degree program the engineer must satisfy a range of requirements (including work experience requirements) before being certified. Once certified the engineer is designated the title of Professional Engineer (in the United States and Canada), Chartered Engineer or Incorporated Engineer (in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, South Africa and Zimbabwe), Chartered Professional Engineer (in Australia) or European Engineer (in much of the European Union).


Licensure, certification, and regulation

Some locations require a license for one to legally be called an electronics engineer, or an engineer in general. For example, in the United States and Canada "only a licensed engineer may seal engineering work for public and private clients." This requirement is enforced by state and provincial legislation such as Quebec's Engineers Act. In other countries, such as Australia, no such legislation exists. Practically all certifying bodies maintain a code of ethics that they expect all members to abide by or risk expulsion. In this way, these organizations play an important role in maintaining ethical standards for the profession. Even in jurisdictions where licenses are not required, engineers are subject to the law. For example, much engineering work is done by contract and is therefore covered by contract law. In cases where an engineer's work fails he or she may be subject to the tort of negligence and, in extreme cases, the charge of criminal negligence. An engineer's work must also comply with numerous other rules and regulations such as building codes and legislation pertaining to environmental law.

In locations where licenses are not required, professional certification may be advantageous.

Professional bodies

Professional bodies of note for electrical engineers include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE),now the Institution of Engineering and Technology(IET). The IEEE claims to produce 30 percent of the world's literature in electrical/electronic engineering, has over 370,000 members, and holds more than 450 IEEE sponsored or cosponsored conferences worldwide each year. The IEE publishes 14 journals, has a worldwide membership of 120,000, certifies Chartered Engineers in the United Kingdom and claims to be the largest professional engineering society in Europe.

Modern electronic engineering

Electronic engineering in Europe is a very broad field that encompasses many subfields including those that deal with, electronic devices and circuit design, control systems, electronics and telecommunications, computer systems, embedded software, and so on. Many European universities now have departments of Electronics that are completely separate from or have completely replaced their electrical engineering departments.


Electronics engineering has many subfields. This section describes some of the most popular subfields in electronic engineering. Although there are engineers who focus exclusively on one subfield, there are also many who focus on a combination of subfields.

Overview of electronic engineering



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 checking, and error detection of digital signals.

Telecommunications engineering deals with the transmission of information across a channel such as a co-axial cable, optical fibre or free space.





Instrumentation engineering deals with the design of devices to measure physical quantities such as pressure, flow, and temperature. These devices are known as instrumentation.





Project engineering




See also


  • Christiansen, Donald, Charles K. Alexander, and Ronald K. Jurgen. 2005. Standard Handbook of Electronic Engineering, 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0071384219.
  • Horowitz, Paul, and Winfield Hill. 1989. The Art of Electronics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521370957.
  • Scherz, Paul. 2007. Practical Electronics for Inventors, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0071452816.

External links

All links retrieved September 15, 2017.



