Work in progress - a new time-sharing remote laboratory e-learning system for hardware design and experiment of digital circuits

A new remote laboratory system for learning hardware design and experiment of digital circuit has been developed. It employs shared resources and an e-learning system based on the top-down method specializing in the logic circuit design and featuring a quick acquisition of the hardware-description-language-based design skill. The wide use of the Internet motivated us to develop seamless remote and actual hardware laboratories for hardware design laboratory course, and for students to learn the digital circuit design by themselves. The proposed remote laboratory utilizes actual hardware and actual measurement tools in a time-sharing fashion. The combinatorial use of FPGA/PC connected test hardware and PC-based measurement equipments has made it possible to develop a remote multi-user and time-sharing hardware experiment system. As all students are equipped with high-performance Laptop PCs, CPU intensive development tasks can be performed by each student's client PC in a rich-client environment. The prototype the remote-laboratory and self e-learning system are under-construction, and will be used for the third grade CS students from year 2005