Facets of EE: A career point of view

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Facets of EE A career point of view!
Dr.Amit Kumar Mishra Indian Institute of
Technology Guwahati
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Plan of presentation

• Sign posts!
• What is EE?
• Some branches of EE
• A generic future plan!
• Conclusive remarks

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Introduction and sign post

• Interrupt me whenever and where-ever you want!
• At any point, if you feel bored, feel free to
  leave quietly!

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What is EE?

• Electronics control of electron-flow!
• Controlling factor electric field/magnetic field
  (weak force! What other forces??)
• 1882 Darmstad University of Technology first
  faculty in EE
• 100 years 100 sub-branches

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Three main branches

• Power
• Communication
• Instrumentation

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Power

• Generation
• Transmission
• Distribution

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Communication

• Signal/Information
• Source
• Destination
• Link

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Instrumentation

• What is an instrument?
• Measurement devices instruments e.g.??
• Measurement ? control

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Some fancy things!

• DSP (ASP??)
• VLSI
• AI
• Robotics
• Complexity!

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DSP

• Why digital?
• What is signal?
• Usages??
• Image, Speech, Any signal from a sensor (e.g.
  radar/sonar/biomedical/camera/mobile)!

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Robotics and AI

• Strictly speaking its not a part of any existing
  faculty!
• What is intelligence?
• Imitate human intelligence??
• Weak AI
• Strong AI (consciousness!)
• Is it possible via. Classical logic system?
• "The question of whether a computer can think is
  no more interesting than the question of whether
  a submarine can swim."

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Some more fancy topics

• Soft computing
• ANN
• Fuzzy logic
• Evolutionary computing (e.g. genetic algorithm,
  ant-search algorithm etc.)

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Complexity

• Complex vs. complicated
• Complicated in structure consisting of
  interconnected parts -WW
• Difficult to analyze or understand WW
• Complex total gt the sum of parts!
• e.g. human brain, ant-hill, stock-market(?),
  swarm, life(!)

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Some writers for a lighter read!

• Paul Davis
• Roger Penrose
• David Bohm
• Alan Turing

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VLSI

• Manufacturing technology (gt 10 000 transistors in
  a single chip)
• Device level engineering (solid state physics)
• Application/Design engineering (elect. Design
  automation or EDA tools)

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Moores law

• Number of transistors in a chip ? double every 18
  months
• In terms of size of transistor you can see
  that we're approaching the size of atoms which is
  a fundamental barrier, but it'll be two or three
  generations before we get that farbut that's as
  far out as we've ever been able to see. We have
  another 10 to 20 years before we reach a
  fundamental limit. By then they'll be able to
  make bigger chips and have transistor budgets in
  the billions (Manek Dubash, 2006)

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Designing VLSI chips??

• EDA tools (electronic design automation tools)
• Chip-EDA gap
• Thrust on testing (This is what most of the so
  called VLSI-jobs consist of!)

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e.g. Digital VLSI design

• PROM (e.g. erasable PROM or EPROM)
• Floating gates to make/brake contact
• Next device was PLA/PAL

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Ref. http//ece.ut.ac.ir/classpages/F85/LogicLab/F
PGA.pdf
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• Programmable connection (static-RAM/anti-fuse/EEPR
  OM technology and many more) root to
  semi-programmable chips
• Logic-blocks/IO-cell/macro-cell

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• Hence the idea of programming by netlist files
  (come in many names/flavors!)
• If a tool knows the PLA structure and how to
  match functionality to that we can program at a
  higher level!

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Hardware description languages

• Mainly VHDL/Verilog
• As easy (or difficult) as any programming
  language
• A little different approach

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IPs and SoC

• Intellectual property (IP)
• Soft chip! e.g.ARM
• System on chip (SoC)

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Some inter-faculty topics

• Biomedical-elect.
• Mechatronics!
• MEMS
• Chemical sensors
• Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM)
• Bio-informatics

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Some activities in our department
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Research Groups

• Communication and Advance DSP
• Biomedical and Speech Processing
• Control and Instrumentation
• VLSI
• Image Processing and Computer Vision

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Communication and Advanced DSP

• Faculty Involved
• Prof. A. Mahanta, Prof. A. K. Gogoi, Dr. R.
  Bhattacharjee and Dr. K. Rakhesh Singh, Dr. P.R.
  Sahu, Dr. A. Mishra, Mr. Rajesh A.,
• Research Areas
• DSP based Communication systems, Wireless
  Mobile Systems, Communication Networks, Antennas,
  Microwave Engineering, Fiber Optics

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Biomedical and Speech Processing

• Faculty Involved
• Dr. S. Dandapat, Dr. J. S. Sahambi,
• Dr. H. Nemade, Dr. S. R. M. Prasanna and
  Dr. R. Sinha
• Research Areas
• Biomedical Signal Processing, Medical
  Electronics, Biomedical Instrumentation, Medical
  Image Processing, Voice Disorders, Stressed
  Speech Analysis, Speech Recognition, Speaker
  Recognition.

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Control and Instrumentation

• Faculty Involved
• Dr. S. Majhi, Dr. C. Mahanta and Dr. H. Nemade.
• Research Areas
• Control Systems, Control Theory Applications,
  Stochastic Systems, Robotics, Industrial/Ultrasoni
  c instrumentation, Underwater acoustic.

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VLSI

• Faculty Involved
• Dr. R. Paily, Prof. A. Mahanta, Dr. Abhijit
  Mitra and Dr. A. Mishra
• Research Areas
• Development of VLSI Architectures for
  Signal Processing and Communication
  Algorithms, VLSI Design and Hardware Verification
  

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Image Processing and Computer Vision

• Faculty Involved
• Prof. P. K. Bora,
• Dr. S. Dandapat and Dr. S. R. M.
  Prasanna
• Research Areas
• Image Processing, Computer Vision, Video
• Processing, Pattern Recognition, Biometric
• Person Authentication Face Identification,
• Face Recognition

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Laboratory Facilities

• Electronic Circuits Laboratory
• Control Instrumentation Laboratory
• Embedded Systems Laboratory
• DSP Communication Laboratory
• Antennas,Microwave Radio Frequency Laboratory
• Electro Medical and Speech Technology Laboratory
• Image Signal Processing Laboratory
• VLSI Laboratory
• System Simulation Laboratory

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Carrier planning

• Should be done ASAP
• Should be at least in terms of 10-15 years
• Landmarks and revision of plan!

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A generic career plan

4-6 years
2-3 years
4-6 years
Improving skills Higher education Initial
experiences
Rise in corporate ladder Increasing contacts
Incubation period
Be your own CEO/CTO
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Some useful sites!

• http//www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/SPAC/
  
• http//gb.espacenet.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Ac
  tionFormGenTemplategb/en/home.hts
• http//ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-a
  nd-Computer-Science/index.htm
• www.theiet.org
• www.ieee.org

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Conclusive remarks

• Take-homes
• Some possible areas of research
• Some possible areas where you might be working in
  another 3-4 years
• Long term planning

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Dont follow the trends,set new trends!
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Many Thanks!