IEEE

 

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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Type	Professional Organization
Founded	January 1, 1963
Origins	Merger of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers
Key people	Leah H. Jamieson (current president)
Area served	Worldwide
Focus	Electrical, electronics, and information technology[1]
Method	Industry standards, Conferences, Publications
Members	360,000+
Website	www.ieee.org

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as 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 360,000 members in around 175 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 rule. It also sponsors or cosponsors more than 300 international technical conferences each year .

IEEE has a dual complementary regional and technical structure - with organizational units based on geography (e.g., the IEEE Philadelphia Section) and technical focus (e.g., 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. There are seven steps to its standard setting process, which typically takes 18 months to complete: 1. Securing Sponsorship, 2. Requesting Project Authorization, 3. Assembling a Working Group, 4. Drafting the Standard, 5. Balloting (75% approval required), 6. Review Committee, and 7. Final Vote.

The current (2007) president of IEEE is Leah H. Jamieson. The current (2007) president of IEEE-USA is John W. Meredith.

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 (e.g., mechanical and civil) as well as biologists, physicists, and mathematicians.

Member (MIEEE)

Member Grade is limited to those who have satisfied IEEE-specified educational requirements and/or who have demonstrated professional competence in IEEE-designated fields of interest. For admission or transfer to the grade of Member, a candidate shall be either:

(a) An individual who shall have received a three-to-five year university-level or higher degree (i) from an accredited institution or program and (ii) in an IEEE-designated field

(b) An individual who shall have received a three-to-five year university-level or higher degree from an accredited institution or program and who has at least three years of professional work experience engaged in teaching, creating, developing, practicing or managing in IEEE-designated fields; or

(c) An individual who, through at least six years of professional work experience, has demonstrated competence in teaching, creating, developing, practicing or managing within IEEE-designated fields.

Associate Member

Associates are members of the IEEE who do not otherwise qualify for Member Grade. They receive all rights and privileges of Members, but they generally can not participate in the governance of IEEE (e.g., vote in IEEE elections, or hold offices that are restricted to Member Grade and above). 123

Student Member (S'MIEEE)

Special pricing is available for students seeking association with the IEEE. You must be a full time student studying one of the IEEE disciplines.

Senior Member Grade (SMIEEE)

The grade of Senior Member is the highest for which application may be made and shall require experience reflecting professional maturity. For admission or transfer to the grade of Senior Member, a candidate shall be an engineer, scientist, educator, technical executive, or originator in IEEE-designated fields for a total of 10 years.

Fellow Grade (FIEEE)

The grade of Fellow recognizes unusual distinction in the profession and shall be conferred only by invitation of the Board of Directors upon a person of outstanding and extraordinary qualifications and experience in IEEE-designated fields, and who has made important individual contributions to one or more of these fields. An IEEE Fellow may use the distinction "FIEEE".

Non-members

Affiliate

Society Affiliates are a vital part of the IEEE community; however, they are not IEEE members and are not entitled to any IEEE benefits or services that are reserved solely for IEEE members. Society Affiliates are encouraged to elevate their status to full IEEE membership in order to take advantage of the array of benefits.

Publications

See also: IEEE 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 ^[1], including:

• IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
• IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
• IEEE Transactions on Communications
• Journal of Communications and Networks
• IEEE Communications Letters
• IEEE Communications Magazine
• IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
• Computer (magazine)
• IEEE Transactions on Computers
• IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
• IEEE Transactions on Control Systems and Technology
• IEEE Design & Test of Computers
• IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
• IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
• IEEE Intelligent Systems
• IEEE Internet Computing
• IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology
• IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
• IEEE Multimedia
• IEEE Transactions on Multimedia
• IEEE Network
• IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
• IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
• IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
• IEEE Power Engineering Review
• IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics
• IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
• IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics
• IEEE Sensors Journal
• IEEE Software
• IEEE Spectrum
• IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
• IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
• IEEE Wireless Communications
• IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

The content in these journals as well as the content from several hundred annual confrences are available in the IEEE's online digital library at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

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 ,^[2] the Education Partners Program,^[3] Standards in Education^[4] and Continuing Education Units (CEUs).^[5]

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^[6] 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

The IEEE has been accused of abusing its near monopolistic position in some scientific domains.^[7] When publishing with the IEEE, the author is forced to transfer his copyright to the IEEE who then sells the paper in journals as well as online without paying anything to the authors or the reviewers. Attendance fees to conference meetings are also notoriously high. This has prompted the appearance of new, more open scientific publishers^[8][9]. However, publishing in IEEE journals is almost mandatory to get some recognition in certain scientific communities.^{[citation needed]}

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
4. 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.
5. 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% (i.e., 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 is not 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.
6. 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.
7. Final Vote: Each member of the IEEE-SA Standards Board places a final vote on the submitted standard document. 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 securitiy 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 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 12207 — Information Technology
• IEEE Switchgear Committee C37 series of standards for Low and High voltage equipment

IEEE Awards and Honors

Major Medals

• IEEE Medal of Honor
• IEEE Edison Medal
• IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
• IEEE John von Neumann Medal
• IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
• IEEE Simon Ramo Medal
• IEEE Benjamin G. Lamme Medal
• IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal

Field Awards

• IEEE SA International Award
• IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award
• IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award (no longer active)
• IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award
• IEEE Nikola Tesla Award
• IEEE Internet Award
• IEEE Long Island Section Awards & Region 1 Awards
• IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
• IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal

See also

• IEEE Computer Society
• IEEE Communications Society
• IEEE Power Engineering Society (IEEE PES)
• IEEE Control Systems Society (IEEE CSS)
• IEEE Signal Processing Society
• IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics Society (IEEE SMC)
• IEEE Engineers in Medicine and Biology Society
• IEEE Engineering Management Society(IEEE EMS)
• IEEE Electron Devices Society
• IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society
• IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society
• IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society
• IEEE Vehicular Technology Society
• IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation
• Institution of Engineering and Technology (a similar organization in the UK)
• OASIS (organization) - global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards.
• Plug-in hybrid
• SPIE

References

The Standards & the IEEE Standards Development Process section is based on information originally obtained from the IEEE and IEEE-SA websites, and the Appendix of the article "The Role of Market-Based and Committee-Based Standards," by Sanjiv Patel, Babson College 2002.

External links

• IEEE Global Website
• IEEE Standard Association
• IEEE Xplore — over a million online documents
• Organization of the IEEE
• IEEE Students
• www.tryengineering.org - IEEE website for students age 8-18, and their parents, teachers, and guidance counselors.
• IEEE Virtual Museum A virtual museum that illustrates many of the basic electrical engineering and electricity concepts through examples, figures, and interviews
• The IEEE-USA Entrepreneurs Village, established to support those people who create entrepreneurial businesses based on technology.
• IEEE Components Packaging and Manufacturing and Technology Society
• IEEE Richmond Section Blog
• IEEE PHEV info

Technical Societies of the IEEE

Aerospace and Electronic Systems • Antennas and Propagation • Broadcast Technology • Circuits and Systems • Communications • Components Packaging and Manufacturing and Technology • Computational Intelligence • Computer • Consumer Electronics • Control Systems • Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation • Education • Electromagnetic Compatibility • Electron Devices • Engineering Management • Engineering in Medicine and Biology • Geoscience and Remote Sensing • Industrial Electronics • Industry Applications • Information Theory • Intelligent Transportation Systems • Instrumentation and Measurement • Lasers and Electro-Optics • Magnetics • Microwave Theory and Techniques • Nuclear and Plasma Sciences • Oceanic Engineering • Power Electronics • Power Engineering • Product Safety Engineering • Professional Communication • Reliability • Robotics and Automation • Signal Processing • Social Implications of Technology • Systems, Man and Cybernetics • Ulrasonics, Ferroelectronics and Frequency Control • Vehicular Technology

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