STUDY MATERIAL · GATE EC · EE · IN
GATE Electromagnetics: questions and notes
Electromagnetics questions from 21 GATE papers (2018–2026) with the official answers, each solved step by step, plus notes for each topic, a formula sheet and practice questions.
- previous-year questions
- 71previous-year questions
- solved step by step
- 71solved step by step
- GATE papers, 2018–2026
- 21GATE papers, 2018–2026
- topics with notes
- 7topics with notes
TOPICS
Seven topics, in the order they are taught
Taken from the official GATE 2027 syllabus. Each topic has notes, the formulas you need, its previous-year questions with the official answers and step-by-step solutions, and practice questions.
- GATE EE · IN only
Electrostatics: fields, potential, Gauss's law and capacitance
Electrostatics covers the fields and potentials of charges at rest, in free space and in dielectrics, and the capacitance of pairs of conductors.
23 previous-year questions · 37 marks · 5 practice questions
- GATE EE · IN only
Magnetostatics, magnetic circuits and inductance
Magnetostatics is the study of the steady magnetic field set up by steady currents: finding H and B from a current by the Biot-Savart law or Ampere's circuital law, the force and torque that field exerts on moving charges, conductors and loops, and how it behaves inside magnetic materials and across boundaries.
12 previous-year questions · 20 marks · 5 practice questions
Maxwell's equations, Faraday's law, boundary conditions and the Poynting vector
Maxwell's four equations tie the electric and magnetic fields to their sources and to each other.
5 previous-year questions · 8 marks · 5 practice questions
- GATE EC only
Plane waves: propagation, reflection, polarization and skin depth
A uniform plane wave is the simplest solution of Maxwell's equations away from sources: the electric field, the magnetic field and the direction of travel are mutually perpendicular, and the medium fixes how fast the wave moves (phase constant, phase and group velocity), how quickly it dies out (attenuation constant, skin depth) and how the electric field relates to the magnetic field (intrinsic impedance).
10 previous-year questions · 17 marks · 7 practice questions
- GATE EC only
Transmission lines, impedance matching, S-parameters and the Smith chart
A transmission line is a circuit long enough, compared with the wavelength, that voltage and current travel along it as waves, described by the line's characteristic impedance Z_0 and propagation constant γ.
13 previous-year questions · 20 marks · 5 practice questions
- GATE EC only
Waveguides and optical fibres
A hollow metal pipe carries microwaves only above a cut-off frequency set by its cross-section, and each field pattern (mode) has its own cut-off.
6 previous-year questions · 11 marks · 5 practice questions
- GATE EC only
Antennas and antenna arrays
An antenna converts a guided wave into a radiated one and back, and every standard result in this topic grows from one idea: the far field of a short current element.
2 previous-year questions · 3 marks · 5 practice questions
QUESTIONS BY TOPIC AND YEAR
71 questions, by topic and year
How many questions each topic had in the EC, EE and IN papers of each year. This shows what was asked, not what will be asked. We placed each question under a topic ourselves; the exam paper does not label topics. Every question links back to its paper.
| Topic | 2018 | 2020 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electrostatics | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 23 |
| Magnetostatics | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 12 |
| Maxwell's equations | · | · | 2 | 1 | · | 1 | 1 | 5 |
| Plane waves | 2 | 2 | · | 3 | 1 | · | 2 | 10 |
| Transmission lines | 2 | 3 | · | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 13 |
| Waveguides & fibres | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | · | · | 1 | 6 |
| Antennas | · | 1 | · | · | · | · | 1 | 2 |
GATE ECE question papers with solutions: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2018
GATE EE question papers with solutions: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2018
GATE IN question papers with solutions: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2018
The 2019 and 2021 papers are not included yet: the copies we host are image scans without the official key.
Electromagnetics formulas by topic
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THE OFFICIAL SYLLABUS
What each paper lists under Electromagnetics
From the GATE 2027 syllabus PDFs: EC Section 8, “Electromagnetics”, EE Section 3, “Electromagnetic Fields”, and IN Section 2, “Electricity and Magnetism”. The papers list different halves of the subject. EC lists Maxwell's equations, plane waves, transmission lines, waveguides and antennas. EE and IN list electrostatics, magnetostatics and magnetic circuits, and IN adds the B-H curve and Maxwell's equations. So most topics are marked for EC only, or for EE and IN only. Papers cross those lines. EC papers set four electrostatics questions (the static case of the Maxwell's equations and boundary conditions EC lists). IN papers set four optics questions, three on optical fibres and one on refraction through a slab; we placed them beside EC's optical-fibre topic, although IN lists fibre-optic sensing under Communication and Optical Instrumentation.
GATE EC
Maxwell's Equations: Differential and integral forms and their interpretation, boundary conditions, wave equation, Poynting vector. Plane Waves and Properties: Reflection and refraction, polarization, phase and group velocity, propagation through various media, skin depth. Transmission Lines: Equations, characteristic impedance, impedance matching, impedance transformation, Sparameters, Smith chart. Rectangular and circular waveguides, light propagation in optical fibers, dipole and monopole antennas, linear antenna arrays.
GATE EE
Coulomb's Law, Electric Field Intensity, Electric Flux Density, Gauss's Law, Divergence, Electric field and potential due to point, line, plane and spherical charge distributions, Effect of dielectric medium, Capacitance of simple configurations, Biot‐Savart’s law, Ampere’s law, Curl, Faraday’s law, Lorentz force, Inductance, Magnetomotive force, Reluctance, Magnetic circuits, Self and Mutual inductance of simple configurations.
GATE IN
Coulomb's law, electric field intensity, electric flux density, Gauss' law, electric field and potential due to point, line, plane and spherical charge distributions, effect of dielectric medium, permittivity, capacitance, magnetic field intensity, magnetic flux density, Biot‐Savart’s law, Ampere’s law, Faraday’s law, Lorentz force, permeability, self and mutual inductance, electrical and magnetic dipoles, electromagnetic induction, magnetomotive force, reluctance, magnetic circuits, B-H curve, Maxwell's equations: vector, differential and integral forms.
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