Introduction:

My fascination for the ever-growing world of Science & Technology and an intense urge to delve into the challenging field motivated me to take up masters in Telecommunication Engineering for my graduate study. Telecommunication can be simply stated as instantaneous transmission of sounds, pictures, words, and data by electronic means. It also plays a vital role in increasing the connectivity between various societies across the globe. Among the various specializations in telecommunications, the area that I found most interesting is Satellite Communications as it deals with the communication of distant objects. Satellite Communications is also challenging as it contains very difficult topics like orbital maneuvering, speed of the object and several complex mathematical problems. The current trends in my field, which I felt most promising, are Li-Fi, VoLTE and GoogleX. These ongoing research projects helps in boosting telecommunications to a whole new level.

Organizations Related to my Major:

1. IEEE Communications Society (COMSOC) – COMSOC is a foremost global communication organization in the field of Telecommunications. It was established in 1972 as an independent society of IEEE. This society bolsters various conferences and technical research work in various parts of communication technology and engineering. The recent conference by COMSOC–ICNC 2015 was held at Anaheim, California, USA on February 16^th The keynote speakers in this conference are Ramesh Jain, Victor Bahl, Michael I. Jordan, Larry Peterson, etc. The upcoming conference by COMSOC, GLOBECOM 2015 is to be held at San Diego, CA, USA on 6^th December.

2. Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED): TED is a nonprofit organization developed in 1984 to spread ideas, normally in the form of small yet powerful videos. It covers various topics from science to global issues in more than 100 languages. It also runs independent events like TEDx and Conferences which helps in sharing of ideas across various communities across the world. TEDGlobal is a 5-day conference conducted every year and the most recent conference was held on October 6^th, 2014, in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Some of the papers and video lectures given by various speakers help in different kinds of research related to Telecommunications.

3. International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) – IAMCR is one of the renowned worldwide professional organization in media and communication research. The members in this group encourage each other by participating in the research activities. IAMCR’s most recent conference was held at Hyderabad, India on 15^th July, 2014 in which topics like Environment Science and Risk Communication were covered. IAMCR’S forthcoming conference will be held on July 12^th 2015 at Montreal, Canada. This organization has a unique combination of research papers related to Media and Telecommunication. These papers can be used for several research activities related to Telecommunications.

4. International Communication Association (ICA) – ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in studying, teaching and other research activities. The ICA was started 60 years ago as a small organization of researchers from US and now it burgeoned as an international organization with more than 4500 members spread over 80 countries. ICA’s expertise is accessible to its members and the knowledge is shared using various research papers. ICA includes 26 Divisions and Interest Groups, each representing a subfield in the study of communication. This association also publishes peer-reviewed journals like Journal of Communication, Communication Theory etc. to which the members have free access.

5. Academia.edu – Academia.edu is a platform for scholars from various organizations to share research papers. Its mission is to accelerate the world’s research by gathering all the research papers and journals together. It gives opportunity to several new researchers as it currently has free membership and all its members can go through almost 5,125,324 papers and 1,455,948 research interests. Academia.edu attracts new members into research by providing the required material in an easy and organized way. It has around 9560 research papers related to the field of telecommunications and also have information related to various journals.  

Journals/Professional Publications:

1. IEEE Transactions on Communications – This journal is published by IEEE Communications Society and has the longest history among all communications journals. It focuses on most important concepts of telecommunications like networking and broadcasting. And contains several high quality papers which were submitted in the area of optical, wireless and wired communications. These papers endure an arduous peer-reviewing process before they get published in the journal. This is journal is published every month and it also provides e-journals for the convenience of its researchers.
2. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication (IJRITCC) – This journal is published by Auricle Technologies Pvt. Ltd and it consists of research papers related to Networks, Communications and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. Their intention is to produce a low budget journal so that it is in the reach of most of the researchers. The papers for publication are selected by the process of peer-reviewing. IJRITCC is more inclined towards strengthening academic knowledge and research skills. This journal is published every month by gathering new papers from scholars in the field of computers and communications.
3. Journal of Optical Communications and Networking(JOCN) – This journal includes advances in the field of optical communications and networks. In this journal both practical contributions and theoretical contributions of networking are encouraged. This journal has its own editor and the selection of academic papers is done by peer-reviewing. This journal is published every month throughout the year and each volume has its own set of new research papers. This journal is also available at a lower price if we order an e-journal.
4. International Journal of Networking and parallel Computing (IJNPC) – This is an International e-journal that includes fields of Telecommunications, Networks and Computer Science. This peer-reviewed International journal is funded and managed by Council for Innovative Research (CIR). This journal contains original review papers, as well as research material. This journal is published collectively, it doesn’t have any particular time frame; it is published as soon as the required papers are ready. This journal has a great emphasis for the field of Networking and Data Networking.
5. International Journal of Scientific Academic Research (IJSAR) – This is a peer-reviewed monthly published journal which has the research work of scholars. This journal only accepts original research papers and refereed international journals across different fields in sciences, engineering and technologies that stresses new research and development. This Journal Contains the communication engineering articles which help new researchers in the field of Telecommunications. This journal has so many pages when compared with other journals as it contains various papers related to the fields of Science and Technology.
6. International journal of Computer Technology and Applications (IJCTA) – IJCTA is the Journal of Engineering fields published in India. It is an international forum for scientists and engineers in all aspects of Computer Science and Technology to publish high quality refereed papers. This Journal is published every alternate month and it has only six editions per year. Though the publication of this journal started recently, it contains several high quality research papers in Computer Technology and Its applications in other fields like Telecommunication.
7. International Journals of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE) – IJEETE is a non-profit organization which has scientists and researchers as its members. This is a monthly publication and is a referred journal in various fields of engineering. There is an expert team for this journal who select, review and analyze the research papers before being published in the journal. This journal contains papers related to the current trends in Telecommunications and Communication Engineering. This Journal is also available as an e-journal for the convenience of its subscribers.

Renowned Scholars in my Major:

1. Claude Elwood Shannon – Claude Shannon was called as the father of digital communications as he planted the seed for the digital communications. His paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” which was published in 1948 contains fundamental limits on signal processing. At the age of 21, he did a masters’ thesis in MIT entitled “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits”–The main purpose of this paper was to simplify the arrangement of the electromechanical relays in telephone routing switches. Most of the other scholars in the communications industry regard this paper as the birth of digital computer and digital circuit design theory.
2.  John MacChesney – In the early 1970s, as a Bell Laboratories research engineer, John MacChesney shifted his focus on the electrical and magnetic properties of ceramics. The purpose of his research was to find a better way to carry the digital information. MacChesney with the help of his colleague P.B. O’Connor, developed the Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition (MCVD) process, which helped to create optical fibers. His groundbreaking research work in the manufacture of photonic components gave rise to more than 100 domestic and foreign patents.
3. Len Kleinrock – Len Kleinrock is the developer of queuing theory for packet switching. He was considered as one of the four fathers of ARPANET and precursor of the internet. In a Ph.D. thesis written by him in 1962 at MIT, he explained his work on queuing theory and then he applied the same to develop packet switching, the bedrock technology of the Internet. He is still working as a computer science professor at UCLA and also received several awards for his work, including the National Medal of Science from President George W. Bush in 2008 and the Dan David Prize in 2010.
4. John Cioffi – John Cioffi is called as the father of DSL technology. In the late 1970s he worked as a modem designer at Bell Laboratories. Later for five years he worked as a professor at Stanford University in which he along with his students did research on transmitting data at higher rates using telecom lines. They used the outcomes of their research by establishing their own company Amati Communications. The biggest achievement Amati made was development of the Prelude DSL modem which challenged all the existing modems at that time.
5. Harald Haas – Harald Haas works in the University of Edinburgh located in United Kingdom and he is widely recognized as the original founder of Li-Fi Technology. He is still working on the final stages of this project and he gave live demonstrations of various prototypes. Li-Fi is the next generation technology in which we transmit data at higher speeds through light—an LED bulb and this will replace the current generation radio technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. His research on Li-Fi attracted several other scholars in the field of Telecommunications and Computer Engineering.