Electronic and Computer Engineering

This single programme, with four major options in Year Four, replaces and combines the best of DCU’s previous offerings in Electronic Engineering, Digital Media Engineering and Information and Communications Engineering.

You’ll be taught through conventional lectures, extensive tutorials (particularly in Year One), laboratory exercises and projects. Through these you’ll develop the ability to model and analyse the dynamics of a wide range of technological systems, as well as learn a creative and innovative approach to problem solving. The curriculum of the first three years and the 22.5 credits of core modules in Year Four are common to all ECE students.

In addition to the traditional engineering focus on mathematics and design, there is a strong software and programming theme running through our ECE programme. You’ll learn about C, C++, Java, Embedded Systems, Linux and Windows Operating Systems, Data Structures and Algorithms, Hardware Description Language, Object-oriented Programming, and in two of the Year Four majors, Web Application Development.

In Year Three, you’ll participate in a six-month INTRA work placement. Most students choose a paid engineering internship with a business in Ireland, but some students may go abroad or be placed in research positions within DCU.

In Year Four, you’ll select a major option and gain relevant skills through major-specific modules and an individual undergraduate project. Currently the course offers the following four majors, which we’ll adapt over time so that our graduates have the most relevant and up-to-date technology and expertise:

• ECE with a major in Systems and Devices—This is a specialisation in core electronics and semiconductor technologies that underpin research priority areas from sensors, diagnostics, medical devices, digital control of mechatronic systems to optical communications and novel materials.

• ECE with a major in High-Speed Communication—This focusses on devices communicating to devices at high speed, for example, optical networks and high-speed wireless technologies. It underpins research priority areas in next-generation networks that support evolving demands from devices and applications.

• ECE with a major in Digital Interaction—This takes you into the realms of humans communicating to devices, and devices communicating to the world. It underpins research priority areas in human-machine interfaces. Key Year Four modules in this area include 3D Interface Technologies, Web Application Development and Image Processing & Analysis.

• ECE with a major in the Internet of Things—The Internet transformed the world of human access to knowledge and information in unimaginable ways; the Internet of Things is about to unleash an almost inconceivable transformation of the man-made environment in which we live. It focusses on devices communicating to and through the Internet. This major underpins research priority areas in smart cities and energy efficient devices and networks.

In Year Four you’ll also do an individual major-relevant project that will allow you to work in a specialist area of your choosing and apply the electronic and computer engineering skills that you will have acquired during your studies.