Faculty of Engineering

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Browsing Faculty of Engineering by Author "Osasona, Oladipo"

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    Advanced Digital Laboratory: an FPGA-Based Remote Laboratory for Teaching Digital Electronics
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2009, 2009-06) Osasona, Oladipo
    The experimentation component of most Science and Engineering curricula in Nigeria is inadequate. In Obafemi Awolowo University for example, undergraduate students typically carry out around five assignments related to digital electronics, and there is no treatment whatsoever of Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGAs). In the research work being reported, an attempt has been made to develop a remote laboratory though which the number of digital electronics experiments students carry out can be increased. The remote laboratory, called the Advanced Digital Lab (ADLab), allows students to synthesis digital systems on an FPGA with a hardware description language. To achieve this, a development board with an Altera Cyclone II FPGA is connected to a computer implementing the server tier of the iLab batched architecture. The client through which the remote student interacts with the ADLab is implemented with Java, which allows for a reasonable amount of platform independence. This paper discusses the software and hardware aspects of the ADLab architecture and gives some insight into some design decisions. The paper also reports that the system is being tested at Obafemi Awolowo University and that student feedback so far indicates high student satisfaction with the remote laboratory.
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    Development of an Operational Amplifier Virtual Laboratory based on iLab Architecture and NI ELVIS
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2008) Osasona, Oladipo
    We have developed and deployed ‘OpAmp Lab’, a pedagogic operational amplifier virtual laboratory based on the MIT iLab architecture. The architecture is a three-tier architecture that abstracts the various parts of a remote laboratory system into different functional domains. This architecture makes the new virtual Lab experiments scalable and reduces the development and deployment time of new experiments through component reuse. OpAmp Lab uses the National Instrument ELVIS hardware platform for experimental set-up. Basic Op-amp circuits are realized through reconfigurable Dozen Impedance Op-amp configuration mounted on a multimode switch array. The front end or Client is implemented as a Winform Client, written in C# and uses connectible nodes as a metaphor for back-end hardware configuration. Strong emphasis is placed on the realism of the user interface, as we argue, the user interface is the most important determinant of the quality of a user’s educational experience. We discuss the various components of OpAmp Lab and the lessons learnt in the development of the system as well as the development of pedagogical experiments developed for it. OpAmp Lab has been in use at Obafemi Awolowo University, NIGERIA for the last two years. Faculty and students response has been strongly positive. We provide data showing that the Lab offers a viable means of augmenting the laboratory component of electrical engineering curricula in developing countries.
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    Implementing Remote Laboratories with the ILAB Architecture: Three Case Studies from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria
    (Computers in Education Journal, 2012-03) Osasona, Oladipo
    A number of remote labs based on the iLabs Architecture have been developed and used for credit awarding courses in Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Nigeria. These include the Op-Amp iLab, Logic Design iLab, and Robotic Arm iLab. The Op-Amp Lab allows students to access a small operational amplifier circuit hosted in OAU, and with the aid of switching matrices, reconfigure the circuit, inject waveforms, and see the resulting output signals. The Logic Design Lab is built around a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chip that students can reprogram from afar using the VHDL, a hardware description language. The Robotic Arm iLab is a control engineering laboratory in which students can remotely control a robotic arm located in OAU. Video feedback through BroadCam Video Streaming Server and Livestream (www.livestream.com) allows users observe and measure the robotic arm’s response to their commands. In our paper, we describe the iLab Batched and Interactive architectures and describe three iLabs developed in OAU in detail. Emphasis is placed on technical details and design choices made in developing these labs. We also discuss other aspects of iLab development and use and dwell on issues that could hinder or accelerate the adoption of remote laboratories in developing countries.
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    Remote Labs in Education. The Obafemi Awolowo University Experience
    (University of Deusto Bilbao, 2011) Osasona, Oladipo