need help for a decision

Hi,

I finished my 3rd year in an EE program and I took various courses both on hardware design (analog integrated circuits, digital integrated circuits, microcontrollers, HDL etc.) and also some on telecommunications (signals, analog comm and digital comm.). Having taken these courses, I realized that there are many things that I really like on both sides. I like many aspects of designing hardware, though I also like telecommunications and other software stuff (such as image and video processing). I know that in an undergrad study, it's a good idea to take as many different courses as possible rather than just focusing on one aspect of the electronics, however as the time for master studies approaches, I feel that I need to put more effort into one area and start specializing on it. At this point, this choice is very difficult for me. Sure there are no certain boundaries between various branches of EE, but I feel like, if I choose one area for master studies, I'd be giving up on many other beautiful stuff. Do you have any advices for me? How was your decision process, when you encountered such a situation and had a similar feeling in the past? I just want to hear some ideas and clear my thinking to reach a better, more satisfactory decision.

Thanks a lot for your opinions.

Sounds like you might want to focus on image processing. There is a lot of challenging work there that would involve both hardware and software: FPGA design, Analog/Digital conversion, processing algorithms, etc. Image processing itself is fairly broad so that you could be working on anything from HDTV to Radar to consumer cameras. Back when I was in college (about 400 years ago) microprocessors were just appearing. I'm now working on a lot of FPGA-based designs. Where you start now is not where you are going to end up, so just pick what interests you for now. The nature of engineering is that you have to continually educate yourself as the technology changes.

Or you could just open a bakery.

Barry