Electronics Engineering vs. Electronics & Communication Engineering

Electronics and communications engineering (ECE) deals with the design and development of electronic circuits, equipment and machines. Electronic equipment and communication equipment has interconnected everyone in so many ways, such as through mobile phones, TVs, computers or iPads. Electronics is the technology associated with electronic circuits and systems, and is one of the major fields that comes under electrical engineering.

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Electronics engineering has many subfields, including signal processing, telecommunications engineering, control engineering, instrumentation engineering, computer engineering and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design engineering. The Electronics and Communications Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) course is very similar to the Electronics Engineering B.Tech. course. They differ only in that the former has subjects that focus more on communication engineering. Communications can be analog or digital.

Thafasal Ijyas V.P., the Head of the Department of the Electronics & Communication Engineering at AWH Engineering College, Kuttikattor, Calicut, Kerala has the following to say about the two subjects: “As the name suggests, electronics engineering refers to a course that has a primary focus on the physics and behaviour of electronic circuits. It should give an overview of the methods and techniques used to analyze and design circuits. Communication engineering is an important area of application for electronic circuits. Hence any course on electronics engineering should necessarily have subjects in communication engineering also. Similarly, digital electronics, digitals signal processing, power electronics, VLSI, instrumentation etc. are areas in which electronics engineering has applications. The primary focus is on electronic circuit behaviour, design, analysis in the context of the various application areas mentioned above. On the other hand, communication engineering has a signal processing and mathematical aspect as well as an electronics engineering aspect. The curriculum bias should be more oriented towards the mathematics and signal processing of communication engineering.”

The Electronics Engineering B.Tech. course generally covers subjects such as the following: electromagnetic, network analysis, electronic devices and circuits, digital and analog circuits, discrete time signal processing, computer organization, power electronics, electro measuring instruments, continuous time signals and systems, filter theory and application, electronic circuit analysis and design. ECE, though, covers subjects including optical communication, wireless and mobile communication, digital communication, communication system, antenna and microwave engineering, industrial economics, thermodynamics, measurement and instrumentation, information theory and coding, satellite communication and radar, artificial neural networks, radar and navigation, TV engineering, multimedia communication, advanced microprocessor, and advanced semiconductor devices.

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The two courses share several common subjects (both being electronics-based), but the ECE course is more communication-oriented and focused, so much so that it was divided into a separate field.