Instructional design with practical problems using co-simulation

This paper presents design tutorials on image and audio signal processing for an introductory digital systems course. The objectives are to introduce advanced design and to promote interest in digital systems. The use of audio and visual components of design can enhance student's hands-on learning. By using co-simulation, a method in which software in a numerical computation environment generates real-time inputs to the hardware and processes the outputs, students can rapidly create and verify a design. In addition, computational environments such as Matlab and LabView support visual and audio interfaces to ease verification. Tutorials on image filtering and adaptive filter noise cancellation design are being developed and to be used in a digital systems class.