The Role of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering Education in My Life

My mother always said, "You always enjoyed the company of tools from your father's toolkit, maybe a passion for trying against odds runs in your blood." My father is an Electrical Engineer by qualification, with laurels as an industrial consultant by profession, only after hard-earned experience in all walks of the industrial environment. As long as I can remember, whenever I accompanied him to his sites, I always wandered around and tried to get inside the workings of the equipment I stumbled upon. My father always told me that electronics is changing almost everything from methods to equipment. Soon enough, I understood what he meant, as I began to see and imagine the impact of electronics and especially Telecommunication Engineering in my education, entertainment, and leisure.

How Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering Education Has Shaped My Life

Finally, Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering gave me the career to which I can dedicate my vigor and endeavor. After securing a meritorious position in the senior secondary exam, my parents advised me to opt for a Diploma in Electronics and Telecommunication. This was quite unconventional according to the Indian education system. Many thought I had taken up a course that would never give me a successful career. On the contrary, I felt the multifarious effect in my studies, career, and life because it had given me a perfect track to my destiny, taking away all worries and providing me all the time in the world to achieve my life goals. This diploma not only helped me to understand engineering studies with a much better perspective, but it also served as a platform to understand many practical aspects of telecommunication engineering. It was during this time that I had my first encounter with system design and implementation.

Due to my interest in the field and ability to perform time and again, I completed my Diploma with distinction and received the best student award along with a sum of about $100 and a Gold medal. In 2000, I started my engineering studies in the Electronics Department of S.R.K.N. Engineering College. Overwhelming confidence and leadership qualities soon made me a distinctive student. I was given a chance to set up laboratories and project works with faculties on various occasions of high academic value. I was appreciated as a technically equipped student in my department. Although active participation in extracurricular activities like dramatics during cultural events and working as an organizer of events like technical symposiums for college did not let anybody put a tag of a bookworm on me. While I enjoyed playing football for my departmental team, working out project ideas was still my passion. During this time, I made projects for fun and leisure, such as an electronic voting machine for our departmental elections and fastest finger first systems for quiz competitions in college gatherings. These projects only served to aggravate my thirst for electronic system design. With the completion of my Bachelor’s course, I decided to pursue a postgraduate degree in Electronics engineering.

Postgraduate Studies and Research

Successfully clearing the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) exam with 98.02 percentile marks helped me receive a scholarship of about $2500, sponsored by the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry of the Indian Government, for my postgraduate studies. Assiduous goal orientation kept me focused on the goal of implementing novel ideas that boggled me while making projects in the master's course. In one such event, while listening to an expert lecture by Dr. Young Beom Cho of Konkuk University, Seoul, I perceived a notion about some lesser-known facts about error control coding theory in communication systems. Dr. Cho mentioned Low-Density Parity-Check Codes, which were destined to change the face of wireless communication. He also stated the challenges currently encountered by researchers. It was interesting to note that, with proven superiority over any other system known to date, LDPC codes were practically ignored for the past 30 years. Recently, major work is being proposed and done in this area. These facts about LDPC almost immediately engrossed me with eagerness to work out something interesting, if not novel.

Taking the task as a challenge, I drew my path of motion. "Don't pray for a lighter burden, but pray for stronger backs." Though tumbling on some occasions, my hard work paid off. My work on LDPC was widely appreciated. Encouraged by many authorities working in the field of VLSI design and Error Control Coding, I wrote several technical papers that were published in various National Journals (Author, Year). It is this groundwork and encouragement that tempt me to proceed further in the direction of carrying out my Ph.D. in the field of LDPC codes. I plan to carry out my Ph.D. in the field of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes. I would particularly work on developing new algorithms that will make LDPC practically implementable. This will be instrumental in making systems for next-generation wireless communication technology and 4th generation mobile applications.

Future Aspirations

Exploring the mathematics involved, I will try to find out new possibilities for hardware implementation. In this process, an international doctorate will groom me intellectually, embellish my knowledge, bring prosperity in terms of wealth of knowledge, and would make me a ladder of success for others to climb, contributing to the evolution of my country and human society as a whole. I wish to thank my parents and my teacher, for their insight has empowered my vision, given me self-belief, and entrusted me with the knowledge that has enabled me to come so near to realizing my dreams. Thank You. "Science is some kind of cosmic apple juice from the Garden of Eden. Those who drink of it are doomed to carry the burden of original sin" (Author, Year).