The lack of good and up-to-date lab experiments form a major impediment in the domain of engineering education. Often, the lab experiments are outdated. The Virtual Labs project addresses the issue of lack of good lab facilities, as well as trained teachers, by making remote experimentation possible. The pedagogy is student-centric. The Virtual Labs project has also developed a novel methodology for field trials, outreach, and quality control. Virtual Labs also provide tremendous cost advantage. The Virtual Labs project is a wonderful example of an open educational resource developed by a multiinstitution multidiscipline project team. Over 100000 students are currently using the online labs under the Virtual Labs project. Many of these labs are being accessed outside the regular lab hours.

Virtual Labs Project: A Paradigm Shift in Internet-Based Remote Experimentation

It is apparent that implementation of practical sessions in engineering education paves the way for students to be familiar with instruments and, thus, with the industrial real world. In recent decades, the high cost and administration burdens of physical equipment have caused a significant decline in experimentation within engineering education. This situation has fostered the development and adoption of remote laboratories as a replacement. Recently, remote laboratories based on a large variety of technologies have been developed at multiple universities and adopted in industrial electronics engineering education. Furthermore, some of these laboratories are replicated at many universities. This was the commencement of a new mainstream that advocates a better remodeling of those laboratories to allow their allocation, sharing among universities, and their interoperable communication with other heterogeneous educational systems, e.g., learning management systems (LMSs). This article, on the one hand, reports on the design of the state-of-the-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics disciplines along with the cutting-edge technologies adopted. On the other hand, the article sheds light on the outstanding interoperable educational remote laboratories architectures, classifying them with regard to their exclusive features and provided services, and pointing out the limitations of each.

Expanding the Boundaries of the Classroom: Implementation of Remote Laboratories for Industrial Electronics Disciplines

The rapid development in Internet technology and its big popularity has led some universities around the world to incorporate web-based learning in some of their programmes. The present paper introduces a comprehensive survey of the publications about using remote laboratories in electrical engineering education. Remote laboratories are web-based, real-time laboratories that enable students to measure and control the measurements remotely in their own time. The survey highlights the features of many recent remote laboratories and demonstrates the software and networking technologies used. The paper provides a comprehensive overview on several aspects related to remote laboratories development. The paper concentrates on the publications appearing during the last decade. The review is arranged according to the area of specialisation, then chronologically.

The advancement in using remote laboratories in electrical engineering education: a review

A new approach to increase the subsurface flaw detection capability of pulsed eddy current technique

In this paper, the implementation of Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) Radar in Software Defined Radio (SDR) Platform is presented mainly for the purpose of detecting underground targets. The SDR platform used in this research is the National Instruments’ (NI) Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP™). For the interfacing of the USRP, the software development environment NI LabVIEW™ is used. This approach takes advantage of the SDR system’s versatility, like changing the waveform characteristics (frequency, transmit and receive gain) on the fly. In the FMCW Radar technique, a ramp signal is frequency modulated which results to a chirp waveform. The researchers developed a signal processing program in LabVIEW to analyze the received chirp signal and correlate it to the reference transmit signal which can then be analyzed and studied the received signal characteristics and behavior on the LabVIEW platform. This implementation can be a platform for designing low cost alternatives to the expensive commercial electromagnetic techniques like Ground Penetrating Radars, Time Domain reflectometers, Electrical resistivity devices, etc. The method presented in this paper is a precursory step of the researchers for developing and modeling cost effective, robust and marketable Underground Target Detection Radar system. Moreover, this paper presents the successful implementation of FMCW using the USRP and proves that target detection of buried objects is plausible using the said device.

Underground Target Objects Detection Simulation Using FMCW Radar with SDR Platform

In this paper, the development and evaluation of a low-cost remote circuits laboratory for student learning is reported. The laboratory allows students to measure and control a set of circuit experiments through the internet and to predict and analyze the results. The laboratory is developed using NI MultiSim (for simulation experiments), ELVIS II (for performing real experiments) and LabVIEW™ (for control) and structured to enhance students understanding of basic concepts and circuit analysis.

Cost-effectiveweb-based electronics laboratory using NI MultiSim, LabVIEW and ELVIS II

In this paper, we present our work on the design and implementation of a cost-effective remote real time internet-based undergraduate electronic circuits laboratory. The student interacts with the system through a graphical user interface implemented using NI LabVIEW. On the back end, the server processes experiment requests from users and runs them. The proposed online internet-based set of experiments (sixteen experiments are currently available) using NI ELVIS II platform. The laboratory management system is also discussed.

Design and Development of a Cost-Effective Online Electronic Circuits Laboratory

Remote laboratory environments have the potential for delivering current standards of education while creating distance-learning environments. Design of a remote electronics laboratory presents many challenges such as scheduling, switching, content design etc. Several possible switching techniques are used in electronic experiments when implemented in a remote laboratory. This paper discusses various possible switching techniques, their requirements and presents a comparative study on which switching techniques is most suitable.

A study of switching mechanisms in remote electronics laboratories for engineering education

Design and implementation of a remotely controlled online (internet-based) experiment on thin film characterization for nanotechnology laboratory using atomic force microscope (AFM) is reported. Based on a commercially available low-cost AFM (Model NanoSurf EasyScan2) and National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW graphical programming environment, we have developed the remote-controlled AFM measurement system. The system is available online for use by the geographically distributed students to share and run experiments via standard web browsers. The infrastructure for the nanoelectronics laboratory is described and applications of this infrastructure to nanoelectronics education are discussed. Students and researchers could benefit by sharing the AFM through internet.

LabVIEW controlled atomic force microscopy for remote nanoelectronics laboratory

Hardware based remote laboratories are becoming essential for enhancing engineering education. Laboratory courses are being offered to remote students on a global scale with an added benefit the technology offers students; the opportunity to work with sophisticated equipment which may be too expensive for most schools to purchase. In this work, an interface platform is reported which is built to increase the efficiency of the instrument usage. The developed software makes addition of new instruments to an existing remote laboratory easier and quicker.

Subhasis Mahata

Papers

Cost-effectiveweb-based electronics laboratory using NI MultiSim, LabVIEW and ELVIS II

Design and Development of a Cost-Effective Online Electronic Circuits Laboratory

A study of switching mechanisms in remote electronics laboratories for engineering education

LabVIEW controlled atomic force microscopy for remote nanoelectronics laboratory

Common interface platform for development of remote laboratories