Electrical Engineering is Broad?

[Jakk01]

Hi all,
I've been looking through the forums trying to find out what exactly electrical engineers do but have had no luck.
I've read many people say that electrical engineering is a broad degree and there are a number of different types of jobs that they can do within the field (I'm not interest in the other options such as sales) and I was wondering if anyone could describe some of them to me.
What I do know is that electrical engineers are employed to maintain electrical systems such as those on airplanes, are a lot of jobs similar to this?
Are more engineers employed to improve/create new products?
I'm curious to know what electrical engineers who work with signal processing/telecommunications do in particular.
Thankyou.

 

[maverick280857]

Hi all,
I've been looking through the forums trying to find out what exactly electrical engineers do but have had no luck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering might be a good starting point.

I've read many people say that electrical engineering is a broad degree and there are a number of different types of jobs that they can do within the field

This is definitely correct, and not hard to understand...because electronics and communications, form an integral part of almost everything around us.

What I do know is that electrical engineers are employed to maintain electrical systems such as those on airplanes, are a lot of jobs similar to this?

While maintenance is a task that engineers undoubtedly must deal with at times, this not part of a routine job for which they are hired. There are Aircraft Maintenance Engineers for instance, who will usually work on maintenance related issues.

Are more engineers employed to improve/create new products?

Sure, all the time. Look at Intel, nVidia, Apple, Google, Texas Instruments, ...

I'm curious to know what electrical engineers who work with signal processing/telecommunications do in particular.

This depends on whether they are working in industry or academia, and in each case, on the specific problem. Signal processing could involve extracting meaningful signals from noisy measurements in real time, or searching for some specific information in them. It could also involve work on more efficient signal transmission and detection schemes (usually part of communications), improving the quality of images and video (e.g. deblurring images), noise removal, etc. On the hardware side, they could collaborate with embedded system engineers to implement fast, robust algorithms in hardware, or work on algorithms for digital signal processing. These are just some representative examples, and anyone working in signal processing will typically deal with one or more of the topics/issues listed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_processing" .