Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Not to be confused with the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE).

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.

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 conferences organizer. It is also a leading developer of industrial 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 contains the right hand rule.

IEEE produces 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards. It also sponsors or cosponsors more than 300 international technical conferences each year. The IEEE consists of 37 societies, organized around specialized technical fields, with more than 300 local organizations that hold regular meetings. The IEEE publishes an extensive range of peer-reviewed journals, and is a major international standards body (nearly 900 active standards with 700 under development).

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.

The IEEE provides learning opportunities within the engineering sciences, research and broadly, technology. The goal of the IEEE education programs is to ensure the growth of skill and knowledge among the technical profession and to foster individual commitment to continuing education among IEEE members, the engineering and scientific community, and the general public. IEEE offers educational opportunities such as Expert Now IEEE, the Education Partners Program, and Standards in Education.

IEEE also sponsors www.tryengineering.org, 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 you to search for accredited engineering degree programs in Canada and the United States. Search by state/province/territory, country, degree field, tuition ranges, room and board ranges, size of student body, and location (rural, suburban, or urban).

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). It 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 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 7. Final Vote

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).

The current (2006) president of IEEE is Michael R. Lightner. The current president of IEEE-USA is Ralph W. Wyndrum, Jr.

Grades

Senior Member Grade

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

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".

IEEE Xplore

All IEEE publications, including journals, transactions and standards are available online for subscribers on IEEE Xplore. The Xplore database consists of over 1.2 million documents.

History

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.

Standards & 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 754 — floating point arithmetic specifications
IEEE 802 — LAN/MAN
- IEEE 802.3 — Ethernet
- IEEE 802.11 — Wireless Networking – "WiFi"
- IEEE 802.16 — Wireless Networking – "WiMax"
IEEE 829 — Software Test Documentation
IEEE 896 — Futurebus
IEEE 1003 — POSIX – "Unix" compatibility programming standard
IEEE 1076 — VHDL – VHSIC Hardware Description Language
IEEE 1149.1 — JTAG
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 12207 — Information Technology
IEEE Switchgear Committee C37 series of standards for Low and High voltage equipment

IEEE Awards and Honors

External links

IEEE website
IEEE Standard Association
IEEE Entity Web Hosting
IEEE Xplore — over a million online documents
IEEE website for students age 8-18, and their parents, teachers, and guidance counselors.

**IEEE Societies**
Aerospace and Electronic Systems	Antennas and Propagation	Broadcast Technology
Circuits and Systems	Communications	Components Packaging, and Manufacturing 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 & Remote Sensing	Industrial Electronics
Industry Applications	Information Theory	Intelligent Transportation Systems
Instrumentation and Measurement	Lasers & Electro-Optics	Magnetics
Microwave Theory and Techniques	Nuclear and Plasma Sciences	Oceanic Engineering
Power Electronics	Power Engineering	Product Safety Engineering
Professional Communication	Reliability	Robotics & Automation
Signal Processing	Social Implications of Technology	Solid-State Circuits
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics	Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control	Vehicular Technology

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.

1963 establishments | American professional bodies | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers | International nongovernmental organizations

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