Designing Engineering Courses with Embedded Virtual and Real Experimentations
Abstract
:1. Introduction
Background
- Engineering students need to have a solid understanding of the mathematical and physical concepts behind the applications. This is important for engineers who want to design new systems. Skipping important mathematics and physics concepts makes the students vulnerable when they are presented with unfamiliar real-world scenarios.
- The knowledge must be complete with either virtual or real experimentation. Students have diverse learning styles; hence, the teaching needs to be diverse as well.
2. Implementation
The Engineering Courses
Experimentation | ELE 483: Communications Engineering | ELE 452: Antennas | EGN 321: Plasma Engineering |
---|---|---|---|
MATLAB or HFSS simulations. | Random number generation using MATLAB | Quarter wave monopole in HFSS [30] | MATLAB simulation for electrons and ions with only a perpendicular velocity (circular motion) |
Fourier transform in MATLAB | Meshing [31] | Single particle motion with constant parallel and perpendicular velocities (helical motion) | |
Linear time invariant filters | Half-wave dipole [32] | E × B drift | |
Amplitude modulation on MATLAB | Antenna near field and far field [33] | Gradient drift of charged particles | |
Envelop detection | Loop antenna simulation [34] | Curvature drift | |
Frequency modulation | Antenna arrays [35] | Plasma particle populations based on the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution | |
Sampling, quantizing, and encoding in MATLAB | Bi-conical antenna [36] | Magnetic bottles | |
Amplitude shift keying in MATLAB Simulink | Helical antenna [37] | Pinch effect and plasma confinement based on particle pressure and magnetic pressure. | |
Frequency shift keying | Horn antenna [38] | Dispersion relation of plasma waves | |
Phase shift keying | Microstrip patch antenna [39] | Refractive index surfaces of plasma waves | |
Coherent detection | |||
Maximum likelihood decoding in MATLAB | |||
Projects and real experiments | Building an RF transmitter and receiver using the Rhode & Schwartz FPC Z10 RF teaching kits. | Assembling a Yagi antenna and observing the signal spectrum using a spectrum analyzer (group project of three students) | Designing an ionosonde (frequency ramps of 1.6 MHz–12 MHz) tracker using software-defined radios. |
Observing signal power and noise using software-defined radios. | Designing and printing a microstrip patch antenna (group project of three students) | 3D printing a retarding potential analyzer to separate different types of ions. |
3. Student Feedback
3.1. ELE 483: Communications Engineering
3.2. ELE 452: Antennas
3.3. EGN 321: Plasma Engineering
- Agree or disagree on a 1–5 scale: the in-class MATLAB simulations helped me visualize mathematical concepts.Results: nine students strongly agreed that the in-class MATLAB simulations helped them visualize the mathematical concepts, four students agreed, and one student disagreed with this statement. Figure 1 shows these results graphically.
- 2.
- Agree or disagree on a 1–5 scale: the in-class simulations helped me learn MATLAB or gave me more experience in MATLAB.Results: 10 students strongly agreed with this statement, while one student agreed, one student neither agreed nor disagreed and two students disagreed. A graphical view is shown in Figure 2.
- 3.
- Agree or disagree on a 1–5 scale: the NASA videos shown in class tied in-class knowledge to the broad picture of space plasma physics.Results: nine students strongly agreed with this statement while five students agreed. These results are shown graphically in Figure 3.
- 4.
- Agree or disagree on a 1–5 scale: the projects gave me a chance to try out software-defined radios and 3D printing.Results: 11 students strongly agreed with this statement, four students agreed and one student neither agreed nor disagreed. These results are shown graphically in Figure 4.
- 5.
- Agree or disagree on a scale of 1–5: the tours of NASA centers showed me how the in-class concepts are being used in the real world.Results: six students strongly agreed with this statement, three students agreed and two students neither agreed nor disagreed. Figure 5 shows these results graphically.
- “The Course was excellent and very well taught. I liked using MATLAB and it helped me better understand what was going on. The projects were also a good visual and fun to do”.
- “This course offers a great insight into plasma and how it applies to communications and space ion engines”.
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. MATLAB Exercise from ELE 483: Communications Engineering
- Generate a message signal and a carrier signal
- Amplitude modulate the message signal
- Add Gaussian random noise to the modulated signal
- Generate the power spectral density of the modulated signal plus noise
- First, let’s generate the time axis as follows,
- Create a message signal with 1 kHz, and a carrier signal with 10 kHz. Let the amplitude of the carrier be 3 V. Plot the modulated signal, change the modulation index and observed the ideal, over and under modulated conditions.
- Using the inbuilt MATLAB command randn, generate zero mean unit variance Gaussian random noise. And add to the modulated signal.
- Then let’s plot the power spectral density of the modulated signal (y) plus noise. A portion of the code is given below.
Appendix B. Antenna Array Case-Study from ELE 452: Antennas
- Very large array: https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/vla/ date accessed: 5 February 2022
- HAARP: https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu/, date accessed: 5 February 2022
- Square Kilometer Array: https://www.skatelescope.org/, date accessed: 5 February 2022
- What type of antennas is being used in the array (dipoles, dish, parabolic, etc.)?
- How many arrays are in the array?
- Are all antennas identical in shape, gain, etc.?
- What is the array configuration i.e., linear, planer, circular, a hybrid?
- How much are the minimum and maximum input power?
- Maximum output power?
- Are all antennas being fed by the same source or is there a phase difference between each input signal?
- Is it a phased array?
- Note: In antenna theory, a phased array usually means an electronically scanned array, a computer-controlled array of antennas that creates a beam of radio waves that can be electronically steered to point in different directions without moving the antennas—Wikipedia.
- What are the different beam patterns created by the antenna array?
- What are the maximum gain, directivity, etc.?
- For what purposes your chosen antenna array is being used?
- What are the unique capabilities of your chosen antenna array?
- Depth of research 15%
- Answering all questions asked within the presentation 25%
- Quality of the visual presentation 30%
- Quality of verbal communications 30%
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Maxworth, A. Designing Engineering Courses with Embedded Virtual and Real Experimentations. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 610. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13060610
Maxworth A. Designing Engineering Courses with Embedded Virtual and Real Experimentations. Education Sciences. 2023; 13(6):610. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13060610
Chicago/Turabian StyleMaxworth, Ashanthi. 2023. "Designing Engineering Courses with Embedded Virtual and Real Experimentations" Education Sciences 13, no. 6: 610. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13060610
APA StyleMaxworth, A. (2023). Designing Engineering Courses with Embedded Virtual and Real Experimentations. Education Sciences, 13(6), 610. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13060610