Skip to main content

Development and Implementation of Remote Laboratory as an Innovative Tool for Practicing Low-Power Digital Design Concepts and Its Impact on Student Learning

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
  • 1364 Accesses

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 47))

Abstract

Since power dissipation is becoming a significant issue and requiring more consideration in the early design stage, circuit designers must now be experienced in low-power techniques to enhance designing digital systems. Therefore, when teaching low-power design techniques in electrical and computer engineering education, a tool or a method must be made available that enables students to estimate the power dissipation of their digital circuits during the design process. This contribution presents a novel approach, the low-power design remote laboratory system that has been developed at the Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University of Applied Sciences to estimate the power dissipation of a digital circuit remotely via the internet using physical instruments and providing real data. The design takes place at abstraction level and the real data is measured at the low level from the hardware devices. The low level provides more information, which is required for accurately measured values that are hidden at the high level. The technical performance results on using the remote system show that the students are enabled to implement their digital design and to meet the performance targets of reliability as well as to observe almost all influencing factors on the design’s power dissipation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Rabaey, J.M.: Low Power Design Essentials. Series on Integrated Circuits and Systems. Springer, New York (2009)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. Arora, M.: The Art of Hardware Architecture. Springer, New York (2012)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Bhunia, S., Mukhopadhyay, S.: Low-Power Variation-Tolerant Design in Nanometer Silicon. Springer, New York (2011)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  4. Henzler, S.: Power management of digital circuits in deep sub-micron CMOS technologies. Springer series in advanced microelectronics, vol. 25. Springer, Dordrecht (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Feisel, L.D., Rosa, A.J.: The role of the laboratory in undergraduate engineering education. J. Eng. Educ. 94(1), 121–130 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2005.tb00833.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Hofstein, A., Lunetta, V.N.: The laboratory in science education: foundations for the twenty-first century. Sci. Educ. 88(1), 28–54 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ma, J., Nickerson, J.V.: Hands-on, simulated, and remote laboratories: a comparative literature review. ACM Comput. Surv. 38(3), 7-es (2006). https://doi.org/10.1145/1132960.1132961

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. SPICE manual. http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/Classes/IcBook/SPICE/. Accessed 2017

  9. Huang, C.X., Zhang, B., Deng, A.-C., et al. The design and implementation of PowerMill. In: Proceedings of the 1995 International Symposium on Low Power Design, ISLPED’95, pp. 105–110 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Alipour, S., Hidaji, B., Pour, A.S.: Circuit Level, Static Power, and Logic Level Power Analyses. IEEE, Piscataway (2010)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  11. Marculescu, R., Ababei, C.: Improving simulation efficiency for circuit-level power estimation. In: Proceedings of 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. ISCAS 2000, Geneva, pp. 471–474 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Posser, G., Flach, G., Wilke, G., et al.: Gate sizing using geometric programming. Analog Integr. Circ. Sig. Process 73(3), 831–840 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-012-9943-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Shacham, O., Azizi, O., Wachs, M., et al.: Rethinking digital design: why design must change. IEEE Micro 30(6), 9–24 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1109/MM.2010.81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Posser, G., Flach, G., Wilke, G., et al.: Tradeoff between delay and area in gate sizing using geometric programming, pp. 1–4

    Google Scholar 

  15. Nocua, A., Virazel, A., Bosio, A., et al.: A hybrid power modeling approach to enhance high-level power models. In: 2016 IEEE 19th International Symposium on Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and Systems (DDECS) (2016). https://doi.org/10.1109/ddecs.2016.7482453

  16. Bruno, M., Macii, A., Poncino, M.: RTL power estimation in an HDL-based design flow. IEE Proce. Comput. Digital Tech. 152(6), 723–730 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1049/ip-cdt:20045181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Bellosa, F.: The benefits of event-driven energy accounting in power-sensitive systems. In: Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on ACM SIGOPS European Workshop: Beyond the PC: New Challenges for the Operating System, pp. 37–42 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1145/566726.566736

  18. Becker, J., Huebner, M., Ullmann, M.: Power estimation and power measurement of Xilinx Virtex FPGAs: trade-offs and limitations. In: Proceedings of 16th Symposium on Integrated Circuits and Systems Design, SBCCI 2003. IEEE (2003). https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1528-1157.44.s.5.1.x

  19. Schwandt, A., Winzker, M.: Modular evaluation system for low-power applications. In: IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS) (2017)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Shatha AbuShanab , Marco Winzker or Rainer Brück .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

AbuShanab, S., Winzker, M., Brück, R. (2019). Development and Implementation of Remote Laboratory as an Innovative Tool for Practicing Low-Power Digital Design Concepts and Its Impact on Student Learning. In: Auer, M., Langmann, R. (eds) Smart Industry & Smart Education. REV 2018. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95678-7_20

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics