Arsen Melkonyan

Facilitating Remote Laboratory Deployments Using a Relay Gateway Server Architecture

Hands-on experiments prepare students to deal with real-world problems and help to efficiently digest theoretical concepts and relate those to practical tasks. However, shortage of equipment, high costs, and the lack of human resources for laboratory maintenance and assistance decrease the implementation capacity of the hands-on training laboratories. At the same time, the Internet has become a common networking medium and is increasingly used to enhance education and training. In addition, experimental equipment at many sites is typically underutilized. Thus, remote laboratories accessible through the Internet can resolve cost and access constraints as they can be used at flexible times and from various locations. While many solutions have been proposed so far, this paper addresses an important issue of facilitating remote lab deployments by providing remote connectivity services to lab providers using a Relay Gateway Server architecture. A proof-of-concept solution is described which also includes other previously reported useful features. The system has been tested in engineering labs and student assessment is provided.

An Assessment of Remote Laboratory Experiments in Radio Communication

Todays electrical and computer engineering graduates need marketable skills to work with electronic devices. Hands-on experiments prepare students to deal with real-world problems and help them to comprehend theoretical concepts and relate these to practical tasks. However, shortage of equipment, high costs, and a lack of human resources for laboratory maintenance and assistance decrease the implementation capacity of hands-on training laboratories. At the same time, the Internet has become a common networking medium and is increasingly used to enhance education. In addition, at many sites, existing experimental systems are typically underutilized. These cost and efficient exploitation constraints can be resolved by the use of remote laboratories accessible through the Internet that can be shared and used at flexible times and from various locations. This paper is a description of a systematic assessment effort of the efficiency of remote laboratories in radio communication. The labs are offered to graduate and undergraduate students, and hands-on and remote experiences are compared. A dedicated remote experimentation system, eComLab, was developed to support the effort.

Work in progress - real-time remote Internet-based communication laboratory

Over the past decade, with the continued development of information technology the Internet has become a tremendously important part in modern education. Todays graduating electrical engineers need marketable skills which are typically developed in the classroom by experimenting for hands-on experience. Because of overloaded work days and restrictive laboratory hours students generally cannot physically attend labs. Therefore Internet based virtual laboratories can be viable alternatives to the traditional hands-on laboratories. Virtual laboratories have been successfully used by several universities for a few years now. This article describes an on-going program at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), where remote desktop technologies were used for the hardware based communication laboratory creation.

Integrity monitoring and thresholding-based WLAN indoor positioning algorithm for mobile devices

The Global Positioning System (GPS) works well in outdoor areas, but the satellite signals are not strong enough to penetrate inside most indoor environments. 802.11 wireless LANs (WLAN) signals have been explored for more accurate positioning indoors. Contemporary WLAN positioning maintains the database of location-associated signal fingerprints which is used to identify the most statistically likely match of incoming signal data with those preliminary surveyed and saved in the database. An issue with these systems, however, is the operation robustness. This paper investigates the issue of deploying WLAN positioning software on Android mobile platforms and studies an integrity monitoring technique to account for fading signal characteristics, which are often observed in WLAN networks. Integrity monitoring algorithms exploit redundancy of access points and isolate those with corrupted characteristics to improve system robustness.

A Template-Based Short Course Concept on Android Application Development

Smartphones are a common accessory to provide rich user experience due to superior memory, advanced software-hardware support, fast processing, and multimedia capabilities. Responding to this trend, advanced engineering systems tend to integrate mobile devices with their solutions to facilitate usability. With many young students showing interest in learning mobile application development, conventional electrical engineering undergraduate education cannot meet the needs of this workforce due to fast changes in mobile technology and limited curricula hours. Templatebased learning (TBL) methods may overcome these limitations by shortening the learning cycle through fast hands-on introduction to development tools, basic programming, and application development and integration process. Students manipulate code fragments in provided templates, and compile, embed, and run applications. They also implement new applications reusing fragments from other similar templates. TBL modules can be integrated in pre-existing conventional courses to provide basic and fast exposure to the subject. This paper provides an example of a TBL template library for Android phones, which has been used in a classroom setting to collect student attitude data and assess efficiency of the TBL approach.

A remote over-internet hands-on laboratory

Information technology over the last few years has made tremendous leaps, reaching out to every aspect of modern society mainly business, entertainment and education. At the core of this information technology revolution has been the Internet with its vast reach into homes, offices, and classrooms making it a ready, easy and reliable tool for self-learning and technical resources. This has helped students pursue their academic interests, honing their skills from basic to advanced levels in an efficient and concise manner. Traditionally, the standard procedure for electrical engineering students to strengthen their theoretical concepts has been to attend various lab classes to gain valuable experience in design and implementation of classroom theories. However, there may be unavoidable circumstances in any engineering students life arising from social, professional or medical obligations that may prevent him from attending a theory or practical class. The idea of having a virtual laboratory that can be accessed over the Internet is a practical approach to solving this problem and help students to cope up and sharpen their practical skills. This paper throws light upon an on-going virtual laboratory program at the University of Texas at San Antonio that enables students to access and operate hardware and software based experiments physically connected to a web-server using remote desktop technologies conveniently from their PCs.

Validation of HDOP Measure for Impact Detection in Sensor Network-Based Structural Health Monitoring

This paper studies the validity of horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP) measure to evaluate sensor network geometries when localizing impacts in structural health monitoring (SHM). First, HDOP is defined similarly to navigation applications. Even though several low-complexity closed-form solutions have been proposed recently, HDOP measure has been theoretically justified only for iterative least-squares approach. The localization errors of popular impact localization methods are experimentally collected and compared with HDOP data for validation. The experimental setup is also described. It is shown that HDOP, in general, correlates with the positioning error and can be used to characterize geometry.

Integrity monitoring and mobile implementation aspects of WLAN positioning

Location technologies constitute an essential component of systems design for autonomous operations and control. The Global Positioning System (GPS) works well in outdoor areas, but the satellite signals are not strong enough to penetrate inside most indoor environments. As a result, a new strain of indoor positioning technologies that make use of 802.11 wireless LANs (WLAN) appeared. Contemporary WLAN positioning maintains the database of location fingerprints which is used to identify the most likely match of incoming signal data with those preliminary surveyed and saved in the database. An issue with these systems, however, is the operation robustness. This paper investigates the issue of deploying WLAN positioning software on mobile platforms and studies an integrity monitoring technique to account for unstable signal characteristics, which are often observable in WLAN. Integrity monitoring algorithms can handle the redundancy of APs to identify “rogue” ones, isolate them and improve system robustness.

A sensor placement measure for impact detection in structural health monitoring

This paper studies the validity of horizontal dilution of precision (HDOP) measure to evaluate sensor network geometries when localizing impacts in structural health monitoring (SHM). First HDOP is defined similarly to navigation applications. Even though several low complexity closed-form solutions have been proposed recently, HDOP measure has been theoretically justified only for iterative least squares approach. The localization errors of popular impact localization methods are experimentally collected and compared with HDOP data for validation. The experimental setup is also described. It is shown that HDOP in general correlates with the positioning error and can be used to characterize geometry.