Electrical & Computer Engineering

The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering has identified labs associated with key courses in the curriculum that need updating benefiting both electrical (EE) and computer (CpE) engineering students.

Digital Logic Design Lab

Digital Logic Design (EE 268) is one of the first labs where undergraduate EE and CpE students gain hands-on experience. This lab is required for both EE and CpE majors, and is also the foundation for the following subsequent required courses and labs in both programs: EE 264 Microprocessor System Interfacing course; EE 368 Microprocessor Sys Interfacing Lab; EE 457 Embedded System Design course; EE 446 Embedded System Design Lab; EE 334 Digital Electronics course; EE 440 HDL Logic Synthesis course; and EE 447 Programmable Logic Devices Lab. 

Due to design issues with the current boards used in the lab, a new platform for the lab is needed. The best option is the National Instruments – Engineering Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (NI ELVIS) product.  The NI ELVIS Engineering Lab Workstation in concert with the Digilent Digital Electronics Board provides a project-based learning experience using online measurements and practical, embedded design.  

The Digilent Digital Electronics Board (shown at right) is an add-on application board for the NI Engineering Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite III. It features a powerful FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) that students can program using Multisim or the LabVIEW FPGA Module to teach the fundamentals of digital electronics without simultaneously teaching VHDL or Verilog.  The Digilent Digital Electronics Board for NI ELVIS III offers over 19 peripheral devices connected to the FPGA allowing for a wide range of practical experiments for teaching digital electronics   This is important because, students will have (a) access to the modern tools that most universities use in their curriculum, (b) a platform that integrates into our existing curriculum, especially the computer engineering program, giving the students a seamless transition to upper level courses, and (c) students will see the concepts they are taught in the context of real systems helping  to better prepare them for their engineering careers. Student will have the capability to explore fundamental topics used in engineering systems, while working in teams, and apply them in practical designs quickly and effectively. The NI ELVIS platform unites software, hardware, instrumentation, and control in a collaborative environment to prepare the next generation of engineers.

Electronics Lab and Circuits and Devices Lab

In order to provide both EE and CpE students with relevant experience using current technology, the measurement equipment in the Electronics Lab (EE 437) and Circuits and Devices Lab (EE 227) need to be upgraded. The current oscilloscopes are unable to cope with today's storage media and having limited signal display capabilities. Students are amazed that supposedly sophisticated laboratory measurement instruments cannot download an image file onto a normal USB memory stick, and cannot display differential voltage measurements at magnified gain for "windowing" the trace. The lab is in need of 16 Tektronix TBS2202B instruments (2 channel, 200MHz, 2GS/s) to provide the modern tools that will best prepare students for their future engineering careers.

Digital Logic Design Lab

Electronics, Circuits, and Devices Lab