Conducting Research: A Personal Technical Experience
-Part I: At the M. S. University of Baroda
By JIRARA
© JIRARA, August 2022
Published by JIRARA
on matrubharti.com
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Disclaimer: This is the work of fiction as far as all the characters, their names and the names of all the events are concerned and all these are imaginary and hence any resemblance to the persons (and their lives) dead or alive, and any places are coincidental. Even if a few events might look realistic/’real’, these are fictionalised and the associated names are changed in order to maintain their privacy, honour, and security. No intention whatsoever is meant to hurt any feelings of whosoever, irrespective of their personal/cultural beliefs, social or political inclinations, religion-orientations/practicing/philosophy, life styles, and work/business. The ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ (if any used) do not necessarily mean the author of this book/story/article, and these and other such pronouns: her, hers, his, he, she, him, you, your, yours, ours, theirs…; are used for effective personification and dramatization, and the readers should not take these on their ‘own persons’.
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The readers should take these stories/verses/thoughts with/in good spirit. The presented ideas and material are based, where feasible, on readings and (thought-) analyses of scientific/other open literature (which seemed most profound and trustworthy), with as much care as possibly taken. The readers are requested to verify these notions on their own, and use their own discretion. However, these stories/verses/thoughts/ideas (mostly original) are expressed here with an intention of increasing awareness of the readers with a hope that in an overall sense, their (and ours) consciousness would be heightened (in all and multiple directions), so that we all can live our lives on this planet with true happiness, ever-lasting peace and real joy (irrespective of our orientations). The author and the publisher will not be responsible for any negative effects/situations arising as a result of reading these stories/verses and/or following the suggestions if any; and no discussions/dispute of any kind will be entertained at any time and in any way, manner, and/or forum; because the dictum is that if you like(-d) you read, otherwise ignore, what is the point in making a fuss about it?; anyway you are independent to judge the messages in the articles/stories and utilize for your benefits if found useful, since here the idea is in the direction of ‘consciousness raising’. JIRARA.
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Conducting Research: A Personal Technical Experience
-Part I: At the M. S. University of Baroda
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Preamble: In general research means finding something new and/or different thing: a procedure, a method, a methodology, a process, an algorithm, a program, a software, a device, a gadget, a tool, a way, a solution to an existing or an old problem, and some similar aspect. It could be a new solution to the old problem, or an application of the old solution to the new problem as well. In most cases the research should lead to a lasting solution to the chosen problem; for example, the fans to cool rooms, motor vehicles, aerospace vehicles, and so on.
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I started doing some research at the department of electrical engineering of the faculty of engineering and technology (popularly known as the Kalabhavan) of the University.
For the B.E. final year project work for four months, I was assigned a topic of: Tunnel Diode Switching and Storage Circuits, and was told by the guiding professor S. G. Shah to look for the literature on this topic and write a short of survey and prepare the B.E. project report.
For this, I searched several volumes of the IRE/IEEE (USA) proceedings in the Kalabhavan library and prepared several notes on the subject, and then ordered in a chronological serial manner, and wrote down the draft of the report. I do not remember how I would have copied some of the important figures, or photos from these papers. After several iterations of writing, I prepared a final handwritten copy and got it typed by some professional typist, and for the cover page I pasted a graph or circuit on to the bound copy later on, and submitted the report as a so-called the B.E. thesis!
After the collections of all the reports by the department, a presentation was arranged and as I remember I was the only student who had opted for this presentation to the class audience, which I did using chalkboard, since during that time the slide presentation was not feasible. For all other students, it was then across the table oral examination or just the plain evaluation of the B.E. thesis and the marks were assigned.
For me this was an initiation of the research, because the first step of the research is to search the relevant and already published literature on the given topic. By doing the search I learned how to look for the technical articles and papers on the topic from various technical magazines, journals, conference proceedings, and the bound volumes of the same. This requires a lot of time, patience and taking down a lot of notes; and subsequent arrangement in the form of chapters in a certain order to see that the entire material is collected and presented in a systematic manner and some order of the importance of the topic, starting from the basics to some advanced material. So, this was a very useful exercise for me and I felt good that I could do a good project report that was well received by the 4th year class as well as the guide.
This created a confidence in me and I developed liking to this kind of activity, though it was in no case an original work in any way. Of course, by reading the relevant papers I came to know more on the tunnel diodes than was taught in the class. Obtaining a new information and knowledge by our own selves is an initial part of doing research.
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During my M.E. in electrical engg. degree project, my guiding professor Dr. Ranjit C. Desai had first assigned a topic of coming out with a filter for a nonlinear system with time delay in its state equation. This was a very difficult work to do, but I could not refuse.
Meanwhile during the same period, an entrepreneur had returned from USA, and my guide knew him: this man had just then started a new small company and was developing some circuits and devices for some special needs of an industry, and he seemed to be very well versed with the required technology; so my professor told to meet him and help in doing some specific work that can lead to my project work and I can then write a report and hence my M.E. thesis. So, I had started the work assigned to me by this gentleman, as perhaps suggested by my guide. I used to commute by bus to his company and spend hours to understand the problem given to me, and was trying to figure out the details of the existing circuits, and so on; but unfortunately, I was not able to make much progress in that; and one day my guide checked my progress, and told me that I was not doing properly with the assigned project and that the owner of the company was not happy with my work. Thereupon, I had said that it was very difficult to work with him, since he was not giving details that I needed to complete the work, and even was hiding lot of documents, and was not allowing me to see anything, and in this mode, I could not grasp what was actually needed to be done; he was expecting me to do ‘miracles’ without me knowing the details of the existing development; he was too secretive. I was told later on by somebody that he had clandestinely got some IC (integrated circuit) chips and the documents, so he was too secretive.
The professor then told me to discontinue with that company owner, and he asked me to start the work on the assigned topic by him. By this time, I had wasted lot of time, nearly one month of my precious 6-months’ project period, and also had spent lot of money for my commutation to the company. Subsequently, I never met that greedy and sort of ‘dishonest’ engineer.
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I then, concentrated on the development of the solution to the problem of nonlinear filtering with time delay; for which I had followed the papers of my guide and his the then recently published book: System Identification; first I had tried to rederive the similar estimator equations for the sake of learning how these were derived from the first principle; and when I had got success with this, I had started formulating the new problem and attempted to derive the new equations.
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I used to work in the late nights up to 1 or 2 am, since I needed good concentration; and since I was married by then, my wife would wake up at that time and ask me if I needed tea or so. It took several months for me to complete the work, and since I had already lost one month with Mr. Selfush Sheh, in a futile exercise, to develop some circuits for his so called development of new embedded system, I had to do lot of hard work to finish the algorithm development in time before the deadline of submission of the complete M.E. thesis; the equations were too many, the entire derivation was too lengthy, and then the filter had to be verified with simulated data to check whether it really worked and gave the expected results.
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For implementation of the filter, I had to code all the equations in FORTRAN language, and then punch the cards using the punching machine that was housed in the department. Then I used to take the deck of the cards to Sarabhai’s Operations Research group (RRG) and submit the deck for processing there by their computer, that was, perhaps, IBM 1401 or so, I exactly do not remember. It would take one week to get the results, and when I would go to collect the results, I would find that the code had not worked, the garbage was printed out, and the card-deck was also fully disordered and so on; I spent several weeks to set everything right, and then one day I got some sensible results, which again I had to plot in the form of a graph to make a good visual sense of the performance of the filter. This was a great moment for me since something newly derived filter worked satisfactorily on the simulated data.
I leant: i) the art of doing search and survey, ii) to understand the existing approaches to solve the problem, iii) to derive new equations, iv) to write an algorithm from these equations, i.e. programming, v) to punch the cards for inputting the program into the computer, and vi) to analyse and interpret the computer-generated results.
I had made several visits to the ORG which was far away from my residence, and used to commute by buses or autorickshaws, the entire exercise was tiring, unnerving when I did not get results for first few weeks, and also very expensive.
Once, I got satisfactory results, I approached a clerk in the faculty office, and at a cost he typed (during out of office hours) my thesis that had several equations and much less text; every moment he had to turn knob of the type-writer machine up and down to print three levels of symbols, a very enduring task, but he did it almost correctly and then I got my thesis bound and submitted; the department head had commented that my thesis was too thin like me, since it was only of 50 pages!
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My oral examination for the thesis was scheduled in the morning of 14th December 1973, and my daughter was born on 12th December in the evening; and since I was too busy with the preparation of my defence, and since I was too tense, I did not visit my wife and the baby in the private nursing home in time.
For viva examination a professor from IIT, New Delhi had come, and I had made the presentation of the work using the chalkboard. The defence was successful, however, the examiner commented that the 2nd chapter of the thesis was of only one page!, but this was so because I had avoided putting there the equations of the existing filter, and mainly it was due to the fact that getting all that typed would have taken away lot of time, and even the money.
The professor then had called me in his chamber and in the presence of the external examiner had told that I was given 70% marks for the thesis; this I just had accepted, I had no say, it was a good riddance that I at least got the distinction in the thesis, and a great ordeal was over, that had taken lot of toll on myself in respect of waste of one month earlier, then too many visits to the ORG group for getting the result of the computer code that was written from the equations of the new filter, getting it typed, etc.
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Subsequently, my professor asked me to prepare a technical paper on the work of the thesis, which again I got it typed and printed by the same typist. The professor knew a member of the editorial body of the Journal of the Institution of Engineers (IE, India), who was an army general (or of a similar rank), and was staying in his quarters in the city only; so I was asked to personally go to his house and submit the packet that contained a letter addressed to the editor of the journal section on electronics and telecommunications, and a copy of the paper; for which I went to the army quarters, the security guard prevented me first going in, and when I explained the purpose, he permitted me to go and meet the general, who opened the door and came out and collected the packet and then said ‘fine’ and went in.
Thus, the paper was submitted to the journal, and subsequently it was accepted and published, and in 1975-76, the same paper was awarded K. F. Antia memorial prize of the Institution of Engineers (Telecommunications section), during that time I was working in National Aeronautical Laboratory, Bangalore. Since, I did not know what to do, I wrote to the editor that I would not personally come to receive the award; and that the certificate and the award money (my share of Rs. 500/-) may be sent to me at the NAL address.
When my the then boss in the department had come to know about the prize, had told me that he would have provided funding, TA and DA to go to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to receive the prize; but by then I had made my decision to receive the prize in absentia; in fact, I had no idea what funding, and TA/DA actually meant; because I had not heard such words earlier during my college years.
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By doing work for my B.E. and M.E theses, I was fairly initiated into that fascinating field of research (and development), which then became bread and butter for me for next 47 years.
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