Doing all the simulations and plotting, do I deserve an authorship? I, an electrical engineering undergraduate, am currently involved in a research project, wherein I help write all the codes, run all the simulations, and plot all the graphs.

The paper is about to be submitted soon. I am hesitating whether to mention my desire to be listed as a co-author to my advisor.

Admittedly, I have no contributions to the idea and the theoretical analysis, as those are a bit too complicated for an undergraduate, or at least for me myself.

However, I have done all the implementations of the ideas and plotted all the resulting graphs, which, I believe, will be put into the paper.

In such a case, do I deserve an authorship (maybe 3rd or 4th)? Or it is reasonable to just acknowledge me in the Acknowledgement paragraph at the end of the paper?

If I deserve one, should I bring this up now or wait until I have done all my work?
I am hesitating whether to mention my desire to be listed as a co-author to my advisor.


Please mention it to your advisor right away.

They may say, "You're right, you should be a co-author." Or, "Given your specific contributions, it wouldn't be appropriate to list you as a co-author, but you will be listed in the acknowledgements." Or they may say, "Given your current contributions you can't be a co-author, but if you also do XYZ for the paper before it is finished, then it would be appropriate for you to be 3rd author."

You may agree or disagree with their answer.

We can't really tell you definitely whether or not you should be a co-author. (We don't know enough about the content of the paper, or your contribution, and it wouldn't be appropriate for you to give that level of detail here.)

But, you should definitely talk to your advisor about it (preferably right away, and definitely before the paper is submitted).

Edit: The OP made the following comment -


  After digging out some info about the previous undergraduate students, I find all of them are not listed as authors. But they are indeed acknowledged in the paper.


If you think for some reason your advisor will be reluctant to include you as an author, you can do some preparation for your talk with them as follows. Then, if your advisor's first reaction is "I've never given authorship to an undergrad before," you are prepared to politely and non-combatively make a case to your advisor for why you think you merit authorship.


Check if your university or department has any formal policy on authorship. For example, here are three different policies.
If you have no university-specific guidelines, you can refer to the IEEE rules. 
In either case, identify to yourself things you have done that you think qualify you for authorship according to the guidelines.


Then, if your advisor's first response is "No" and you disagree (after listening to the reasoning), you can present your side (which your advisor may or may not agree with).

Also, if your advisor's assessment is "No, you haven't done enough to warrant authorship," you can ask  "What else I can do before paper submission that will 'bump' my contribution up to authorship level?" I have had students in the past whose contribution to a paper didn't warrant authorship. In those cases, I told them: "Your current contributions do not merit authorship (only acknowledgement), but if you also do X, Y, Z, you will be an author."

(Note: I'm not advising any kind of escalation at this point - you don't even know yet what your advisor will say! But you may feel more comfortable with some kind of plan in mind for how to explain your contributions (as you understand them) to your advisor if advisor says "No" and you don't think advisor fully understands your side.)

In any event, talk to your advisor as soon as you can.