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ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

4.1 Electrical Engineering is: Electrical engineering is a field of engineering

that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics, and
electromagnetism. This field first became an identifiable occupation in the latter
half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the
telephone, and electric power distribution and use. Subsequently, broadcasting and
recording media made electronics part of daily life. The invention of the transistor
and, subsequently, the integrated circuit brought down the cost of electronics to the
point where they can be used in almost any household object.

Electrical engineering has now subdivided into a wide range of subfields including
electronics, digital computers, power engineering, telecommunications, control
systems, RF engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, and microelectronics.
The subject of electronic engineering is often treated as its own subfield but it
intersects with all the other subfields, including the power electronics of power
engineering.

Electrical engineers typically hold a degree in electrical engineering or electronic

engineering. Practicing engineers may have professional certification and be
members of a professional body. Such bodies include the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology
(IET).

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

History

Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early 17th
century. The first electrical engineer was probably William Gilbert who designed
the versorium: a device that detected the presence of statically charged objects. He
was also the first to draw a clear distinction between magnetism and static
electricity and is credited with establishing the term electricity. In 1775 Alessandro
Volta's scientific experimentations devised the electrophorus, a device that
produced a static electric charge, and by 1800 Volta developed the voltaic pile, a
forerunner of the electric battery.
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19th century

The discoveries of Michael Faraday formed the foundation of electric motor

technology. However, it was not until the 19th century that research into the
subject started to intensify. Notable developments in this century include the work
of Georg Ohm, who in 1827 quantified the relationship between the electric current
and potential difference in a conductor, Michael Faraday, the discoverer of
electromagnetic induction in 1831, and James Clerk Maxwell, who in 1873
published a unified theory of electricity and magnetism in his treatise Electricity
and Magnetism.

Beginning in the 1830s, efforts were made to apply electricity to practical use in
the telegraph. By the end of the 19th century the world had been forever changed
by the rapid communication made possible by 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 conference in Chicago 1893. The publication of these standards
formed the basis of future advances in standardisation in various industries, and in
many countries the definitions were immediately recognised in relevant legislation.

During these years, the study of electricity was largely considered to be a subfield
of physics. It was not until about 1885 that universities and institutes of technology
such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Cornell University
started to offer bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering. The Darmstadt
University of Technology founded the first department of electrical engineering in
the world in 1882. In that same year, under Professor Charles Cross at MIT began
offering the first option of electrical engineering within its physics department. In
1883, Darmstadt University of Technology and Cornell University introduced the
world's first bachelor's degree courses of study in electrical engineering, and in
1885 the University College London founded the first chair of electrical
engineering in Great Britain. The University of Missouri established the first
department of electrical engineering in the United States in 1886. Several other
schools soon followed suit, including Cornell and the Georgia School of
Technology in Atlanta, Georgia.
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During these decades 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 power system 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 Lancelot Brown.[9] Charles Steinmetz and Oliver Heaviside contributed to
the theoretical basis of alternating current engineering.[10][11] The spread in the use
of AC set off in the United States what has been called the War of Currents
between a George Westinghouse backed AC system and a Thomas Edison backed
DC power system, with AC being adopted as the overall standard.[12]

More modern developments

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 possibility of invisible airborn 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, Cornwall, and
St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of 2,100 miles (3,400 km).
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In 1897, Karl Ferdinand Braun introduced the cathode ray tube as part of an
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 Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the
triode.

In 1920 Albert Hull developed the magnetron which would eventually lead to the
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
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 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 completely new technologies and achieve new objectives, including the
Apollo program which culminated in landing astronauts on the Moon.

Solid-state transistors

The invention of the transistor in late 1947 by William B. Shockley, John Bardeen,
and Walter Brattain of the Bell Telephone Laboratories opened the door for more
compact devices and led to the development of the integrated circuit in 1958 by
Jack Kilby and independently in 1959 by Robert Noyce. Starting in 1968, Ted Hoff
and a team at the Intel Corporation invented the first commercial microprocessor,
which foreshadowed the personal computer. The Intel 4004 was a four-bit
processor released in 1971, but in 1973 the Intel 8080, an eight-bit processor, made
the first personal computer, the Altair 8800, possible.

4.2 Sub-disciplines: 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 separate disciplines in their own right.

Power: Power engineering deals with the generation, transmission and

distribution of electricity as well as the design of a range of related devices. These
include transformers, electric generators, electric motors, high voltage engineering,
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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 maintenance of the power grid as well as the power systems that
connect to it.[24] 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. The future
includes Satellite controlled power systems, with feedback in real time to prevent
power surges and prevent blackouts.

Control

Control systems play a critical role in space flight. 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 manner. To implement such
controllers electrical engineers may use electrical circuits, digital signal processors,
microcontrollers and PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers). Control
engineering has a wide range of applications from the flight and propulsion
systems of commercial airliners to the cruise control present in many modern
automobiles. It also plays an important role in industrial automation.

Control engineers often utilize feedback when designing control systems. For
example, in an automobile with cruise control the vehicle's speed is continuously
monitored and fed 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.

Electronics Electronic engineering involves the design and testing of electronic

circuits that use the properties of components such as resistors, capacitors,
inductors, diodes and 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 (of a pneumatic signal
conditioner) is shown in the adjacent photograph.

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. Later, in post war years, as consumer
devices began to be developed, the field grew to include modern television, audio
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systems, computers and microprocessors. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the term radio
engineering gradually gave way to the name electronic engineering.

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 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 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 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 been standard since about 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 field to have a very good working knowledge of the
effects of quantum mechanics.

Signal processing 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 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,
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audio engineering, broadcast engineering, power electronics and bio-medical

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 every type of modern electronic systems and
products including, SDTV | HDTV sets, radios and mobile communication
devices, Hi-Fi audio equipment, Dolby noise reduction algorithms, GSM mobile
phones, mp3 multimedia players, camcorders and digital cameras, automobile
control systems, noise cancelling headphones, digital spectrum analyzers,
intelligent missile guidance, radar, GPS based cruise control systems and all kinds
of image processing, video processing, audio processing and speech processing
systems.

Telecommunications: Telecommunications engineering focuses on the

transmission of information across a channel such as a coax cable, optical fiber or
free space. Transmissions across free space require information to be encoded in a
carrier wave to shift the information to a carrier frequency suitable for
transmission, this is known as modulation. Popular analog modulation techniques
include amplitude modulation and 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 as this is closely related to their signal strength.[39][40] If
the signal strength of a transmitter is insufficient the signal's information will be
corrupted by noise.

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

Computers: Computer engineering deals with the design of computers and

computer systems. This may involve the design of new hardware, the design of
PDAs, tablets and supercomputers or the use of computers to control an industrial
plant. 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. 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 devices including video game consoles
and DVD players.

Related disciplines: Mechatronics is an engineering discipline which deals with

the convergence of electrical and mechanical systems. Such combined systems are
known as electromechanical systems and have widespread adoption. Examples
include automated manufacturing systems, heating, ventilation and air-
conditioning systems and various subsystems of aircraft and automobiles.

The term mechatronics is typically used to refer to macroscopic systems but

futurists have predicted the emergence of very small electromechanical devices.
Already such small devices, known as Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS),
are used in automobiles to tell airbags when to deploy, in digital projectors to
create sharper images and in inkjet printers to create nozzles for high definition
printing. In the future it is hoped the devices will help build tiny implantable
medical devices and improve optical communication.

Biomedical engineering is another related discipline, concerned with the design of

medical equipment. This includes fixed equipment such as ventilators, MRI
scanners and electrocardiograph monitors as well as mobile equipment such as
cochlear implants, artificial pacemakers and artificial hearts.

Aerospace engineering and robotics an example is the most recent electric

propulsion and ion propulsion.