From the Desk of the Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to the second issue of the IETE Journal of Education for the year 2023!

At the outset, I profusely thank all the esteemed Editors, with whose benign presence on the Editorial Board, the number of articles submitted to this journal has visibly increased. I also thank all the new Editors for their valuable contributions in processing the articles and getting them reviewed by renowned academicians and researchers who also deserve thanks for their voluntary services.

Scanning the issue

This issue begins with an invited article by B N Basu on the pioneering works of Dr Amarjeet Singh – a renowned Electronics Engineer of his time (1924–2021), who was awarded Padma Bhushan for his meritorious contributions to Indian Electronics Industry. It is hoped that this narration makes an inspiring story.

In the first regular article of this issue, Easwarakhanthana has presented a simple and instructive experiment to offer an insight into the subtle statistical concepts of electrical noise.

The next article by Duddeti discusses a new technique to reduce the order of high-dimensional, continuous, linear, time-invariant dynamic systems which utilizes the merits of the balanced truncation method and modified Cauer continued fraction expansion.

Rathore, in his article, has presented a general algorithm for a specific algebraic operation on integer numbers carried out iteratively. The operation is shown pictorially by a chain-necklace diagram. The properties of such diagrams are outlined and two special cases, namely, Collatz’s and Nollatz’s conjectures, are discussed.

Resmi and Selvaganesan in their article have presented an improved fractional order Windkessel model in which the fractional order is introduced in the existing 2-element, 3-element and 4-element Windkessel models. Furthermore, a fmincon solver is used to optimize the model parameters and fractionality of the differential equation by minimizing the error between the clinical data and the model output. The simulation results indicate that the fractional order models provide less integral square error than the existing integer order Windkessel models.

In the next article, Pavitra, Jamuna and Manikandan have discussed the Design and Evaluation of Multipliers using Simulated Annealing and Partitioning Approach. The multipliers designed are synthesized on Cadence Genus with 90 nm technology and compared with several traditional designs to conclude that metaheuristics are capable of generating near-optimal solutions in terms of power, area and delay.

Prolific researcher and most frequent contributor to this journal, Professor S C Dutta Roy authored the following six articles, either as the solo author (as in the first five) or the first author (as in the final one). In the first of this series of articles, the well-known Binomial Multisection Transformer formula is proved by the method of induction. This proof appears to be much simpler than other known ones, and is, therefore, expected to appeal to the readers. In his second article, Dutta Roy has presented a method for enhancing the band-pass/band-stop response of two second-order RC networks wherein it is also shown how single grounded resistance control of the resonance/notch frequency can be obtained. In the next article, he has brought to the attention of circuit theory educators, two less well-known RC circuits exhibiting over unity gain. The idea that even passive RC circuits can provide voltage gain greater than ‘1’ is not commonly known or perceived; hence, this could even come as a surprise to many readers! His next article fills up a gap in a previous publication on the design of an active Butterworth high-pass filter employing equal-valued capacitors. In his fifth article, it is shown how the stop-band-width of the parallel-T RC null network can be broadened by cascading another identical circuit to it. In the last article, Dutta Roy and Joshi have presented a modification of a bridged-T RC network, originally proposed by Sulzer, for increasing the stop bandwidth and decreasing the notch level in the frequency response, which also gives the facility for fine-tuning the notch frequency.

It is hoped that the articles published in this issue would be interesting and useful to the readers. Readers are encouraged to send their feedback about this issue to: [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raj Senani

Raj Senani received BSc in engineering from HBTI, Kanpur, ME (Honours) from MNNIT, Allahabad and PhD from University of Allahabad – all in electrical engineering. Dr Senani became a professor at the erstwhile Delhi Institute of Technology, later renamed as Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT) in 1990. He has served as head and dean of various departments at NSIT, dean of the Faculty of Technology of Delhi University and the director of NSIT, New Delhi, a number of times since 1990. He is working as an honorary professor of electronics and communication engineering at Netaji Subhas University of Technology (formerly NSIT) since June 2020.

Professor Senani’s areas of research interest include analog filters and oscillators, current-mode trans-linear circuits and chaotic oscillators. He has published a number of research articles in these areas in IEEE, IEE/IET and other international journals. He has been functioning as an editorial reviewer for a number of IEEE, IET and other international journals. He has been an associate editor for Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing since 2003 and an editor/member of the Editorial board for a number of other international journals.

Professor Senani is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Life Fellow of IETE and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI). In February 2012, he was bestowed with the Second Laureate of the 25^th Khwarizmi International Award for Fundamental Research. In 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, he was ranked among the top 2% scientists of the world in a report published by Stanford University and Elsevier researchers. He was ranked among the top 1% reviewers of the world for engineering and interdisciplinary areas, for three consecutive years, namely, 2017, 2018 and 2019 by Publons (Web of Science). In 2021, he was given Eminent Engineer of the Year 2021 Award and a Scroll of Honour by the Institution of Engineers, India.