Text II: Electronic Engineering

Electronic engineering is a professional discipline that deals with the behavior and effects of electrons (as in electron tubes and transistors) and with electronic devices, systems, or equipment. The term now also covers a large part of electrical engineering degree courses as studied at most European universities. Its practitioners are called electronics engineers in Europe. In the Americas and some other parts of the world, the term electrical engineer is used to describe a person doing the same work.

In many areas, electronic engineering is considered to be at the same level as electrical engineering, requiring that more general programmes be called electrical and electronic engineering (many UK 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.

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 etc. Many European universities now have departments of Electronics that are completely separate from or have completely replaced their electrical engineering departments.

Electronic engineering involves the design and testing of electronic circuits that use the electronic properties of components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes and transistors to achieve a particular functionality.

Signal processing deals with the analysis and manipulation of signals. Signals can be either analogue, 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 checking and error detection of digital signals.