Feature Story

Telecommunications Engineering

Telecommunications engineers analyze, design, install, and maintain telecommunications systems. These include wireless systems, local area networks, cable networks, cellular systems, fiber optics, microwave and satellite links, road traffic informatics, and satellite communications systems.

Telecommunications is an exciting field. Companies worldwide are competing to be the first to market with products such as digital mobile phones and network components that support the full range of Internet services with compact, integrated devices. Specialized terminal equipment will become available for new applications, with almost all existing communication network equipment being enhanced or replaced with innovative technologies.

In addition, multimedia services are opening up communications possibilities and with it services and employment opportunities not dreamed of even a few years ago. These include video conferencing, interactive video on demand, Internet broadcasting of recorded programs and live events, and the real-time transfer of huge amounts of information.

Today even jukeboxes have become a telecommunications device. These next generation, PC-based machines dial into their service providers to download songs using Web technology thus providing a virtually endless variety of music to listeners, while ensuring royalties are paid to the performing artists. Parents can watch their children compete in college sports and cultural events several states away or around the world via live Web casts. Professionals can stay current in their field with on-demand, distance learning. Tomorrow your doctor may use telemedicine to get the advice of a specialist or help patients in remote locations. Your refrigerator may "talk" to your oven to coordinate power usage during peak cycles. The packaged items you buy in a store may scan themselves out during checkout without even needing to be removed from your cart.

In a recent column in BT Technology Journal, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the Media Lab and professor of Media Technology at MIT, said "Telecommunications, will form the basis of new life styles, be at the root of new content, and drive totally new businesses and business models — it will engage all scales in the physical sciences, from the minute to the astronomical. Under these conditions, the field is suddenly as broad as economics, as concrete as engineering and as creative as architecture."

One of the new and exciting specialties within the field is wireless engineering. We've enjoyed wireless technology for decades through radio broadcasts, television, and land-based and satellite telecommunications links. Over the past decade however, wireless communication technology has become an even more pervasive through the proliferation of cell phones, wireless network access, and the development of a myriad of consumer electronics employing wireless interfaces.

Another specialty within telecommunications engineering is avionics, which includes all instruments, sensors, and electronic equipment and the electrical systems that link them to each other and to aerospace vehicle-control systems.

Functions performed by telecommunications engineers include:

• managing engineering teams
• designing telecommunications equipment including modems, switches, routers and radio links
• developing real-time computer systems including imbedded computer systems and their software
• building and testing prototypes of new equipment including integral circuit components
• optimizing the performance of telecommunications systems
• conducting special research projects on next generation telecommunication systems

Typical employers for telecommunications engineers include manufacturers of radio, television, and other audio/visual, broadcasting, and receiving equipment; developers of hardware and associated software, including computer systems, interfaces, security devices, data concentration, data transmission, signaling, satellite, and radio communications and telephone equipment. Still others are service organizations that provide broadcasting, consulting, data communications, entertainment, manufacturing, research and development, and telecommunication system support. The demand for graduates in telecommunications is rapidly increasing as the technology advances and broadens its scope of applications.

Depending on the university, telecommunications may be part of the electrical engineering or computer engineering disciplines, a combination or both, or a separate discipline of its own. Typical courses taken by telecommunications engineers include:

• Radio Frequency Engineering
• Optical Communication Systems
• Fields and Waves
• Information Theory
• Detection and Estimation Theory
• Coding Theory
• Engineering of Packet-Switched Networks
• RF and Microwave Communications Circuits
• Digital Signal Processing
• Speech Signal Processing
• Adaptive Signal Processing
• Wireless Communications Systems
• Signal and Coding for Wireless Communication Systems
• Propagation and Devices for Wireless Communication
• Antenna Engineering for Wireless Communications
• Optical Network Architectures and Protocols

Check out the links related to telecommunications engineering:

The two major professional societies for telecommunications engineers are the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.