Infrastructure for New Senior Design Course Format

Beginning in the Fall semester 2006, Electrical and Computer Engineering undergraduate students will be able to register for a two semester senior design project course sequence. In the past, this capstone design experience had been limited to one semester. The new sequence will permit teams of students to undertake projects that are substantially more challenging and complex.

Student project interest in the areas of communication, networking, and systems continues to be intense. In anticipation of the need to provide infrastructure that can easily be adapted to an eclectic array of new and innovative projects, WNCG faculty member Professor Bill Bard has acquired a suite of National Instruments CompactRIO control and acquisition equipment. The acquisition was supported by a generous grant from the Texas Telecommunications Engineering Consortium (TxTEC). The CompactRIO equipment provides a variety of analog and digital interfaces and the ability to customize acquisition and control processes. The CompactRIO integrated FPGAs may be programmed via tools provided in the LabVIEW programming environment further extending the flexibility and utility of this equipment in the design and testing of experimental systems. This equipment will supplement existing equipment in the Sensor and Ad Hoc Network Research Laboratory.

National Instruments is a corporate member of the WNCG Affiliate Program. For more information on CompactRIO, please visit their site at http://www.ni.com/compactrio/.