Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Totally Explained

Everything about Ieee totally explained

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (read eye-triple-e) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. It has the most members of any technical professional organization in the world, with more than 365,000 members in around 150 countries.

History

The IEEE is incorporated in the State of New York, United States. It was formed in 1963 by the merger of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE, founded 1912) and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, founded 1884).
The major interests of the AIEE were wire communications (telegraph and telephony) and light and power systems. The IRE concerned mostly radio engineering, and was formed from two smaller organizations, the Society of Wireless and Telegraph Engineers and the Wireless Institute. With the rise of electronics in the 1930s, electronics engineers usually became members of the IRE, but the applications of electron tube technology became so extensive that the technical boundaries differentiating the IRE and the AIEE became difficult to distinguish. After World War II, the two organizations became increasingly competitive, and in 1961, the leadership of both the IRE and the AIEE resolved to consolidate the two organizations. The two organizations formally merged as the IEEE on January 1, 1963.
Notable Presidents of IEEE and its founding organizations include Elihu Thomson (AIEE, 1889-1890), Alexander Graham Bell (AIEE, 1891-1892), Charles Proteus Steinmetz (AIEE, 1901-1902), Lee De Forest (IRE, 1930), Frederick E. Terman (IRE, 1941), William R. Hewlett (IRE, 1954), Ernst Weber (IRE, 1959; IEEE, 1963), and Ivan Getting (IEEE, 1978).

Overview

IEEE's Constitution defines the purposes of the organization as "scientific and educational, directed toward the advancement of the theory and practice of electrical, electronics, communications and computer engineering, as well as computer science, the allied branches of engineering and the related arts and sciences." In pursuing these goals, the IEEE serves as a major publisher of scientific journals and a conference organizer. It is also a leading developer of industrial standards (having developed over 900 active industry standards) in a broad range of disciplines, including electric power and energy, biomedical technology and healthcare, information technology, information assurance, telecommunications, consumer electronics, transportation, aerospace, and nanotechnology. IEEE develops and participates in educational activities such as accreditation of electrical engineering programs in institutes of higher learning. The IEEE logo is a diamond-shaped design which illustrates the right hand grip rule. It also sponsors or cosponsors more than 450 international technical conferences each year .
   IEEE has a dual complementary regional and technical structure - with organizational units based on geography (for example, the IEEE Philadelphia Section) and technical focus (for example, the IEEE Computer Society). It manages a separate organizational unit (IEEE-USA) which recommends policies and implements programs specifically intended to benefit the members, the profession and the public in the United States.
   The IEEE consists of 39 societies, organized around specialized technical fields, with more than 300 local organizations that hold regular meetings.
   The IEEE Standards Association is in charge of the standardization activities of the IEEE.
   The current (2008) president of IEEE is Lewis M. Terman. The current (2007) president of IEEE-USA is John W. Meredith.

Publications

IEEE produces 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, publishing well over 100 peer-reviewed journals..
The content in these journals as well as the content from several hundred annual conferences are available in the IEEE's online digital library

Educational opportunities

The IEEE provides learning opportunities within the engineering sciences, research, and technology. The goal of the IEEE education programs is to ensure the growth of skill and knowledge in the electricity-related technical professions and to foster individual commitment to continuing education among IEEE members, the engineering and scientific communities, and the general public.
IEEE offers educational opportunities such as Expert Now IEEE, the Education Partners Program, Standards in Education and Continuing Education Units (CEUs). Expert Now IEEE is a collection of online educational courses designed for self-paced learning. Education Partners, exclusive for IEEE members, offers on-line degree programs, certifications and courses at a 10% discount. The Standards in Education website explains what standards are and the importance of developing and using them. The site includes tutorial modules and case illustrations to introduce the history of standards, the basic terminology, their applications and impact on products, as well as news related to standards, book reviews and links to other sites that contain information on standards. Currently, twenty-nine states require Professional Development Hours (PDH) to maintain P.E. licensure, encouraging engineers to seek Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for their participation in continuing education programs. CEUs readily translate into Professional Development Hours (PDHs) (1 CEU is equivalent to 10 PDHs).
IEEE also sponsors a website designed to help young people understand better what engineering means, and how an engineering career can be made part of their future. Students (ages 8-18), parents, and teachers can explore the site to prepare for an engineering career, ask experts engineering-related questions, play interactive games, explore curriculum links, and review lesson plans. This website also allows students to search for accredited engineering degree programs in Canada and the United States; visitors are able to search by state/province/territory, country, degree field, tuition ranges, room and board ranges, size of student body, and location (rural, suburban, or urban).

Criticism

A number of free software proponents, such as Richard Stallman and Daniel J. Bernstein, have criticized IEEE's copyright policy. As for other scientific and technical journal publishers, when publishing with the IEEE, the author is forced to transfer his copyright to the IEEE. Typically scientific and technical journal publishers don't pay authors or the reviewers. Attendance fees to conference meetings are also notoriously high. This has prompted the appearance of new, more open scientific publishers.However, publishing in IEEE journals is almost mandatory for those operating in the scientific communities of IEEE covered fields: impact factors of IEEE publications are among the highest..

Standards and the IEEE Standards Development Process

IEEE is one of the leading standards-making organizations in the world. IEEE performs its standards making and maintaining functions through the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA). IEEE standards affect a wide range of industries including: power and energy, biomedical and healthcare, Information Technology (IT), telecommunications, transportation, nanotechnology, information assurance, and many more. In 2005, IEEE had close to 900 active standards, with 500 standards under development. One of the more notable IEEE standards is the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN group of standards which includes the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard and the IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networking standard.
The IEEE standards development process can be broken down into seven basic steps, as follows:

Securing Sponsorship: An IEEE-approved organization must sponsor a standard. A sponsoring organization is in charge of coordinating and supervising the standard development from inception to completion. The professional societies within IEEE serve as the natural sponsor for many standards.
Requesting Project Authorization: To gain authorization for the standard a Project Authorization Request (PAR) is submitted to the IEEE-SA Standards Board. The New Standards Committee (NesCom) of the IEEE-SA Standards Board reviews the PAR and makes a recommendation to the Standards Board about whether to approve the PAR.
Assembling a Working Group: After the PAR is approved, a "working group" of individuals affected by, or interested in, the standard is organized to develop the standard. IEEE-SA rules ensure that all Working Group meetings are open and that anyone has the right to attend and contribute to the meetings.
Drafting the Standard: The Working Group prepares a draft of the proposed standard. Generally, the draft follows the IEEE Standards Style Manual that sets “guidelines” for the clauses and format of the standards document.
Balloting: Once a draft of the standard is finalized in the Working Group, the draft is submitted for Balloting approval. The IEEE Standards Department sends an invitation-to-ballot to any individual who has expressed an interest in the subject matter of the standard. Anyone who responds positively to the invitation-to-ballot becomes a member of the balloting group, as long as the individual is an IEEE member or has paid a balloting fee. The IEEE requires that a proposed draft of the standard receive a response rate of 75% (for example, at least 75% of potential ballots are returned) and that, of the responding ballots, at least 75% approve the proposed draft of the standard. If the standard isn't approved, the process returns to the drafting of the standard step in order to modify the standard document to gain approval of the balloting group.
Review Committee: After getting 75% approval, the draft standard, along with the balloting comments, are submitted to the IEEE-SA Standards Board Review Committee (RevCom). The RevCom reviews the proposed draft of the standard against the IEEE-SA Standards Board Bylaws and the stipulations set forth in the IEEE-SA Standards Board Operations Manual. The RevCom then makes a recommendation about whether to approve the submitted draft of the standard document.
Final Vote: Each member of the IEEE-SA Standards Board places a final vote on the submitted standard document. In some cases external members are invited to vote. It takes a majority vote of the Standards Board to gain final approval of the standard. In general, if the RevCom recommends approval, the Standards Board will vote to approve the standard.

Notable IEEE Standards committees and formats

IEEE 488 — Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation, IEEE-488-1978 (now 488.1).

IEEE 610 — Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology.

IEEE 754 — floating point arithmetic specifications.

IEEE 802 — LAN/MAN

IEEE 802.1 — Standards for LAN/MAN bridging and management and remote media access control (MAC) bridging.
IEEE 802.2 — Standards for Logical Link Control (LLC) standards for connectivity.
IEEE 802.3 — Ethernet Standards for Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD).
IEEE 802.4 — Standards for token passing bus access.
IEEE 802.5 — Standards for token ring access and for communications between LANs and MANs
IEEE 802.6 — Standards for information exchange between systems.
IEEE 802.7 — Standards for broadband LAN cabling.
IEEE 802.8 — Fiber optic connection.
IEEE 802.9 — Standards for integrated services, like voice and data.
IEEE 802.10 — Standards for LAN/MAN security implementations.
IEEE 802.11 — Wireless Networking – "WiFi".
IEEE 802.12 — Standards for demand priority access method.
IEEE 802.14 — Standards for cable television broadband communications.
IEEE 802.15.1 — Bluetooth
IEEE 802.15.4 — Wireless Sensor/Control Networks – "ZigBee"
IEEE 802.16 — Wireless Networking – "WiMAX"

IEEE 829 — Software Test Documentation

IEEE 830 — Software Requirements Specifications.

IEEE 896 — Futurebus

IEEE 1003 — POSIX – "Unix" compatibility programming standard

IEEE 1044 — Standard Classification for Software Anomalies

IEEE 1059 — Software Verification And Validation Plan

IEEE 1073 — Point of Care Medical Device Communication Standards

IEEE 1074 — Software Development Life Cycle

IEEE 1076 — VHDL – VHSIC Hardware Description Language

IEEE 1149.1 — JTAG

IEEE 1149.6 — AC-JTAG

IEEE 1180 — Discrete cosine transform accuracy

IEEE 1275 — Open Firmware

IEEE 1284 — Parallel port

IEEE P1363 — Public key cryptography

IEEE 1394 — Serial Bus — "FireWire", "i.Link"

IEEE P1901 — Broadband over Power Line Networks

IEEE 1541 — Prefixes for Binary Multiples

IEEE 1584 — Guide for Performing Arc Flash Hazard Calculations

IEEE 1588 — Precision Time Protocol

IEEE P1619 - Security in Storage Working Group (SISWG)

IEEE 1667 — Standard Protocol for Authentication in Host Attachments of Transient Storage Devices

IEEE 12207 — Information Technology

IEEE Switchgear Committee C37 series of standards for Low and High voltage equipment

Membership and member grades

Most IEEE members are electrical engineers, computer engineers, and computer scientists, but the organization's wide scope of interests has attracted engineers in other disciplines (for example, mechanical and civil) as well as biologists, physicists, and mathematicians. There are several membership grades. In order to qualify for membership, an individual must meet certain academic or experience requirements. Affiliate membership is available to those who don't meet such requirements. Student memberships are available with a reduced membership fee. Students and affiliate have all the privileges of members, except the right to vote and hold certain offices. Upon meeting certain additional requirements, a member can apply automatically for senior membership. Finally, a member felt to have made a significant contribution to electrical engineering may be nominated an "IEEE Fellow", a distinctive award. Some societies allow "affiliate" members, for example members of the society that are not members of IEEE itself.