Welcome to the Department of Engineering

Contact us:www.usm.maine.edu/engineeringengineering@usm.maine.edu(207) 780 5287

Electrical Engineering

• Electrical engineering is the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. This includes: telecommunications, control systems, power systems and transmission, electronics and microelectronics, signal processing, photonics and computer systems.

• An undergraduate degree program is much about electronic circuits (analog and digital), their mathematical representations, methods of analysis and design, the common signal processing tasks that these circuits perform, and the nature and representation of signals.

Electronic Circuits• Digital Circuits

– Electrical signals take discrete values (0 or 1)– Formed by interconnections of logic gates (AND, OR, Flip-Flops)– Described by rules of Boolean algebra

• Analog Circuits– Electrical signals take a continuum of values– Formed by interconnections of resistors, capacitors, inductors,

transistors– Described by rules of differential and integral calculus (Kirchoff’s

circuit laws)

Types of logic devices (integrated circuits)

• Standard devices• Contain a small amount of circuitry(<100 transistors)• Performs simple functions• 7400 series devices

• Programmable logic devices (PLD)•Collection of gates with programmable interconnections•Function is configurable by designer/user•Design with PLD is via a CAD tool

Programmable Logic Devices • Simple PLDs

– Hundreds of gates (GAL 22V10)• Complex PLDs

– Thousands of gates • FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays)

– 1987: 9,000 gates– 1992: 600,000– Early 2000s: millions and hundreds of millions

• ASICs (application specific integrated circuits)