ECE Embedded System Laboratory
Overview
The Embedded
System Laboratory is for education of Computer Engineering including for Real-time Simulation Research.
This laboratory provides
hands-on experiments and integrative projects from fundamental digital logic
design to emerging embedded computing system design. In particular, the lab
equips various evaluation system boards for embedded controllers, digital
signal processing (DSP), and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) with
associated design tools including compilers. In addition, we have been
developing in-house real-time simulator that permits various design and
verification activities for real-time applications. The students become
proficient in the use of many popular design tools including MATLAB/SIMULINK for software-in-the-loop
(SIL) real-time simulation, Xilinx ISE for rapid prototyping in hardware
description language (HDL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) real-time simulation,
and MPLAP with PIC18/32 for embedded programming and system design, NI-LabView
for graphical user interface (GUI) for console of the real-time simulator, and
so on.
Rapid Prototyping
with FPGA
Rapid prototyping
is one of the promising methods for satisfying the time-to-market constrain in
embedded system industrial sector. Multiple FPGA evaluation boards including
Xilinx Spartan 3E Starter Boards and other FPGA boards are available for
students’ design and verification activities.
Real-time Simulation
Workbench
Our in-house developed real-time simulation (RT-SIM) workbench
is suitable for hands on activities of real-time applications, such as design
of an electrical vehicle. The RT-SIM workbench consists of a console and a
real-time simulator with expandable input/output modules, including Logitec
Driving Force GT and Logitec Flight System G940. For the software development,
QNX and RedHat real-time operating systems (RTOSs) are employed for the
real-time simulators. We have been offering distinctive projects: (1) the SIL
and HIL real-time simulations with a golf cart and (2) the HIL real-time
simulations with a helicopter shown in the following figures.
Embedded System
Design Workbench
The
embedded system lab is designed for facilitating embedded software and hardware
education and research including embedded C programming, embedded system
design, advanced digital design, embedded kernel and RTOS, and real-time
application.
