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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION 1

Experiential Learning of Digital Communication

Using LabVIEW
Wei Zhan, Senior Member, IEEE, Jay R. Porter, Senior Member, IEEE, and Joseph A. Morgan, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper discusses the design and implementa- students understand complex theories and connect these to
tion of laboratories and course projects using LabVIEW in an practical problems. While instrumentation is primarily a focus
instrumentation course. The pedagogical challenge is to enhance of electrical engineering, the subject is used in nearly all engi-
students’ learning of digital communication using LabVIEW.
LabVIEW was extensively used in the laboratory sessions, which neering majors.
better prepared students for the course projects. Two course The use of LabVIEW in the engineering curriculum for data
projects were designed to familiarize the students with virtual acquisition, instrumentation, and control is well documented.
instrumentation, data acquisition, Modbus communication, and LabVIEW has been used to teach Fourier transforms [3],
simple closed-loop control. One project involved the instrumen- analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) [4], thermodynamics [5],
tation and control of a brushed dc permanent magnet motor; the
other involved the instrumentation and control of a small-scale vibration measurements [6], telephone line encoders and de-
temperature chamber. Students used one computer, functioning coders [7], material testing [8], biomedical engineering [9],
as a Modbus slave, to measure the motor speed or temperature digital signal processing (DSP) [10], signals and systems [11],
inside the chamber and to turn the motor or lightbulbs on and circuit analysis [12], dynamic systems and controls [13], mecha-
off. Another computer, functioning as a Modbus master, reads tronics [14], and liquid level control [15]. It also has been used
the measurements using Modbus communication protocol via
RS-485 wires, compared the measurements to the set points, made as a tool to teach engineering students introductory software
control decisions, and sent the commands to the Modbus slave for programming [16], [17], problem solving [18], and digital
actuation. The effectiveness of student learning is analyzed using logic [19]. Many multidisciplinary courses and projects have
student survey data. used LabVIEW as the data acquisition tool [20]. Porter et al.
Index Terms—Digital communication, engineering education, used LabVIEW as a means to link simulation and laboratory
experiential learning, instrumentation. experiments and as a tool for troubleshooting measurement
systems [21]. There have also been several implementations
of LabVIEW remote panels and Runtime engine for remote
I. INTRODUCTION access to laboratories through the Internet, for purposes such as
distance education [22]–[25]. Naghedolfeizi et al. conducted an
EING a practical discipline, engineering requires intensive survey on the subject of Web-enabled technologies,
B hands-on experience. Extensive discussions on the
role of laboratory work in education have questioned how to
including LabVIEW, to build remote experiments [26]. Arthur
and Sexton used LabVIEW to convert an old steam power plant
strike a balance between theory and practice [1]. Laboratories and cooling tower into a state-of-the-art control system [27].
can be expensive and time-consuming, while theoretical study Quinn discussed the use of LabVIEW to provide early, contin-
can be boring and difficult to understand. However, without uous, and significant laboratory experiences for all engineering
the fundamental understanding of theory, laboratory work can students throughout the freshman and sophomore years at
become an inefficient trial-and-error process. One solution Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA [28]. Several other
proposed by many scholars is to use tools such as LabVIEW scholars have made efforts to incorporate LabVIEW into the
throughout engineering education programs. entire engineering curriculum [6], [29]–[32]. Erwin et al. pro-
LabVIEW, developed by National Instruments (NI), is a data posed to use LabVIEW, together with LEGO materials, starting
acquisition, instrumentation, and control programming tool in kindergarten and continuing through graduate school [33].
widely used in industry. LabVIEW’s graphical programming The conclusions from these articles were overwhelmingly
environment, with its many software features and hardware positive. LabVIEW allowed students to learn instrumentation
options, is the main reason for its increasing popularity. Many concepts through meaningful hands-on experience.
researchers and engineers use LabVIEW for testing and rapid This paper describes how, in response to industry needs,
prototyping in the product development process [2]. In insti- an instrumentation course (ENTC359) in the Electronics
tutions of higher education, LabVIEW can be used to help and Telecommunications Engineering (EET) program in the
Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distri-
bution, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA,
Manuscript received November 09, 2012; accepted May 02, 2013.
The authors are with the Department of Engineering Technology and In- was revamped to focus on digital instrumentation [34]. Two
dustrial Distribution, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3367 new course projects were created to provide students with
USA (e-mail: [email protected]).
hands-on experience in digital communication protocol using
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. LabVIEW [35]. LabVIEW was chosen as the tool for the course
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2013.2264059 projects due to its ability to provide hands-on experiences for

0018-9359/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE

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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

Fig. 1. Temperature chamber.

Fig. 2. Motor control system.
students, which is particularly important for engineering tech-
nology programs. As part of a curriculum integration effort, controllers, with software or hardware implementation, can be
LabVIEW—already in use by several other courses in the EET implemented to control the speed; instrumentation is required
program—was integrated throughout the entire curriculum. to measure the speed for closed-loop control design. Based on
Modbus is a serial digital communication protocol developed these considerations, several low-cost motors, including the
by Modicon in 1979 that functions as an application-layer mes- IG220019*00015R motor from Digilent, were tested as the
saging protocol providing client/server communication [36]. It common platform for vertical curriculum integration. In the
is simple, robust, and widely used in industry. As a result, it has Spring semester of 2010, a motor control system, shown in
become the de facto standard in industry. Modbus is an open Fig. 2, was added so that one half of the ENTC 359 students
architecture with specifications freely accessible on the Web. could work on the temperature control systems and the other
Other digital communication protocols were also considered, half could work on the motor control systems.
bearing in mind the need for an open architecture. Foundation The setup of these two systems is illustrated in Fig. 3. For the
Fieldbus and DNP3 were among the candidates for the course temperature control system, a temperature sensor circuit con-
projects. Though both are open architectures, users must pay sisting of a constant voltage potentiometer circuit is installed,
membership fees to obtain copies of the specifications, and ac- which allows the user to monitor the temperature inside the
tual implementation had the potential to be more complicated chamber. Two lightbulbs can be turned on and off by sending
than for Modbus. It was also found that the National Instru- digital signals to the switches. The lightbulbs can be used to
ments’ Web site offered free Modbus modules for LabVIEW. increase the temperature inside the chamber. A fan, whose
All these factors contributed to the decision to use Modbus and speed can be controlled by a dc permanent magnet motor using
LabVIEW in the course projects. pulse-width modulation (PWM), is installed at one end of the
chamber. The cooling rate can be adjusted by varying the motor
II. COURSE PROJECTS speed. The external power sources for the lights, motor, and
The objectives of ENTC 359 are to learn the fundaments temperature sensor circuit are not shown in Fig. 3.
of electronic instrumentation, including sensors, ADC, dig- To develop a closed-loop temperature control system, stu-
ital-to-analog conversion (DAC), signal conditioning, digital dents must create a LabVIEW virtual instrumentation (VI). The
filters, digital communication, and virtual instrumentation. The VI uses an analog input channel for temperature reading, two
learning outcomes include being able to analyze and design dig- digital output channels for turning the lightbulbs on and off, and
ital filters; to design virtual instrumentation using LabVIEW; a digital output channel for PWM control of the cooling fan. A
and to analyze and design the Modbus communication protocol DAQ card is provided for data acquisition.
in LabVIEW. For the motor speed control system, students are provided
Inspired by the work of Arthur and Sexton [27], three old tem- with a dc PM brushed motor and motor control board. The motor
perature chambers in good working condition were converted has two terminals for power and an encoder for speed measure-
to a closed-loop system using LabVIEW and a data acquisition ment. The motor control board allows the user to drive the motor
card (DAQ). Fig. 1 shows one of the chambers. Three chambers, with a PWM signal and read the encoder signal. A LabVIEW
however, were not enough to meet to the needs of the class, re- VI with a counter channel for encoder signal and a digital output
sulting in some conflict between teams. This shortcoming was channel for motor PWM needs to be created. A timed loop can
addressed by adding a motor control system project. be used to calculate the motor speed using the digital signal from
The motor control systems were chosen because motor con- the encoder. The motor also utilizes an external power source,
trol was already used in other EET courses, thus contributing to not shown in Fig. 3.
the curriculum integration effort; and because the temperature The first stage of the course projects requires the students
chambers and motor control systems use different types of in- to use an NI DAQ (PCI-6251) to actuate the control (turn on
puts and output, thus giving students more opportunities to learn the lights and PWM the motor) and read the feedback signals
and gain hands-on experience. (voltage from the temperature sensor circuit and encoder from
DC permanent magnet (PM) motors are widely used in motor). The Modbus master and slave are run on two separate
industry for their low cost, ease of control, and reliable per- desktops in the LabVIEW environment. The communication
formance [37], [38]. Engineering educators have used them between the master and slave occurs through an RS-485 bus
successfully for curriculum improvement purposes [39]. The cable. Once per second, the slave reads the desired temperature
motor principles can be explained straightforwardly. Digital or motor speed from the master. The controllers reside in the
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ZHAN et al.: EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION USING LabVIEW 3

Fig. 3. Setups of the temperature chamber and motor control systems.

to enrolling in ENTC 359 were encouraged to use the lab time

to go through more advanced training.
Lab 2: Data Acquisition Using LabVIEW DAQ-Analog Input:
A constant potentiometer circuit was implemented on a bread-
board for temperature and light intensity measurements. The
analog voltage from the sensor circuit was read through the
DAQ. The voltage was then converted to temperature or light
intensity display in a VI according to the sensor characteristics.
Lab 3: Using LabVIEW’s Analog or Digital Output to Turn
Fig. 4. Temperature/speed profile created on the front panel of the master VI.
an LED On or Off: The result from Lab 2 was then incorpo-
rated with the use of temperature or light intensity to turn the
slave VI, and the feedback and actuation are carried out in the LED on/off. A simple control logic was implemented: If the
slave through the DAQ card. The slave also performs tasks such temperature or light intensity was higher than a threshold level
as digital filtering, conversion from voltage to temperature, and specified by the user in the front panel, the LED was turned on.
counting pulses for speed calculation. The slave sends the cur- The LED circuit and sensor circuits were all implemented on
rent output (temperature or motor speed) to the master. a breadboard. The control logic was tested by holding the tem-
The master allows the user to set a profile and to specify it by perature sensor or covering the light intensity sensor. It was also
defining the discrete points on the profile and connecting two tested by moving the threshold level in the front panel.
adjacent points with a line segment as illustrated in Fig. 4. The Lab 4: Closed-Loop Temperature Chamber Control: A
profile can be the desired temperature or motor speed. Various closed-loop control for the temperature chamber with a single
graphical and numerical displays are also required on the front VI was developed. Students used the VI created in Lab 3 to
panel of the master and slave. control the temperature. The control of the lights and fan motor
were tested. The logic created in Lab 3 was modified to include
the operation of the cooling fan. A user-defined temperature
III. LABVIEW-BASED LABORATORIES AS PREPARATION FOR profile was a part of the VI so that the desired temperature
THE PROJECTS
could be a function of time.
ENTC 359 is one of the first courses in which students at Lab 5: Closed-Loop Motor Speed Control: A closed-loop
Texas A&M are exposed to LabVIEW software; it teaches the control for motor speed with a single VI was developed. Stu-
basic concept of virtual instrumentation and is accompanied by dents used their VI created in Lab 3 to control the speed. The
online LabVIEW training modules [40]. Students then subse- signal from the motor encoder was processed to provide speed
quently use LabVIEW in several other courses in the EET pro- feedback. A user-defined speed profile was a part of the VI so
gram. Ideally, through repeated exposure to LabVIEW in var- that the desired motor speed could be a function of time.
ious courses, students will come to master the software and use After these five laboratories, students were asked to down-
it effectively to solve engineering problems. load the Modbus master and slave VI from the NI Web site.
One issue encountered during the ENTC 359 course project Simple communication between two desktops could be estab-
was that many student teams ran out of time to complete the lished using the sample VI, whose front panels are shown in
project [34]. To help students focus on the main topic of dig- Fig. 5. In the screenshot captured in Fig. 5, the master had
ital communication and the product development process, the four coils and four registers. These have the values of “False,
laboratories were revised so that students were better prepared False, False, True” and “0, 4, 7, 0”; these values were trans-
for the course projects. Five laboratories were created in order mitted through an RS 485 communication bus to the slave and
to familiarize students with using LabVIEW to read analog and displayed on the front panel. The user set the values for four dis-
digital inputs and to send analog and digital outputs. crete inputs and input registers to “False, True, False, False” and
Lab 1: Online LabVIEW Training [40]: Only the first six “2, 0, 5, 0”. These values were also transmitted to the Modbus
LabVIEW modules were used in ENTC 359: LabVIEW En- master.
vironment; Passing Data and Debugging; Loops; Timing and The NI Modbus module provided a basic platform for dig-
Storing Data; Array, Clusters, and Text Based Nodes; and Vari- ital communication between the two computers. The students
ables. Students possessing basic knowledge of LabVIEW prior were tasked with building a closed-loop temperature or motor
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

Fig. 5. Modbus master and slave front panels.

Fig. 6. Modbus frame over serial line.

speed control system using this platform as a required task for

the course project. The Modbus master and slave VIs are not
only a starting point for students to build their closed-loop con-
trol systems; they are also a learning tool for Modbus. Students Fig. 7. Modbus message captured with an oscilloscope.
used the VIs to discover how each byte in a Modbus message
is formed and how bytes were put together to form a Modbus most significant bit is sent first and the least significant bit is
Protocol Data Unit (PDU). sent last. The details of forming the Modbus PDU can be added
A Modbus serial line PDU consists of address, function code, to the front panel.
data, and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) [or longitudinal re- The output from the slave VI can be displayed in an oscillo-
dundancy check (LRC)] as shown in Fig. 6 [36]. The bytes in scope as illustrated in Fig. 7, which allows students to under-
the Modbus PDU are sent from left to right. For each byte, the stand the Modbus message down to single bits.
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ZHAN et al.: EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION USING LabVIEW 5

Fig. 8. Front panel of a Modbus master VI created by a student team.

The front panel of a Modbus master VI created by a student Some students also figured out how to avoid the flickering of
team is shown in Fig. 8. The temperature profile (the piecewise the lights by adding hysteresis to the control logic. As a part of
linear trace) and the actual temperature were plotted on the same the curriculum integration effort, the temperature or motor con-
chart (on the bottom left corner). The error was also displayed trol systems will be used in the laboratories of the subsequent
on the front panel. The students taking ENTC 359 had not yet Controls course, where PID control can be applied to the con-
taken the Controls class; therefore, the control algorithm was troller to further improve the result.
based on common sense logic. A typical temperature control The following digital low-pass filter was implemented in the
logic looks like the following: Slave VI:

if temperature desired temperature C (1)

then turn two lightbulbs on and turn the fan motor off; where is the temperature, is the filtered temper-
ature from last step, and is the current filtered tempera-
else if temperature desired temperature ture. The parameter between 0 and 1 is a user input in the
then turn one lightbulb on and turn the fan motor off; front panel. Changing will change the cutoff frequency of the
low-pass filter. Students could easily see the effect of changing
else if temperature desired temperature C the cutoff frequency: When is too small, the filtering is not
enough; when is too large, there is an unacceptable delay of
then turn both lightbulbs off and send a high PWM duty
the filtered signal.
cycle to the fan motor;
A software bug was identified within LabVIEW (ver. 2010
else turn both lightbulbs off and send a low PWM duty cycle and older), where a local variable inside a case structure would
to the fan motor. not work as intended. This software issue was reported to NI.
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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION

TABLE I and smallest standard deviation (0.44). The result shows that
RAW DATA FROM STUDENT SURVEY students felt the laboratories achieved the design objective of
supporting the course projects. Question 7a has the highest
standard deviation (0.75), which may be a result of the smaller
sample size. No other apparent reasons can be identified as the
cause of the higher standard deviation. Questions 2 and 10 have
the lowest average (4.55). A possible cause for the low average
for Q10 may be that the course projects are more difficult than
the laboratories. The 95% confidence levels for the mean and
Another issue with the LabVIEW Modbus was that the bus only standard deviation reveal similar conclusions.
allows one slave as opposed to multiple slaves. This issue pre- In addition to the end-of-semester student survey, students
vented students from controlling both the temperature chamber were asked to evaluate themselves at the beginning and the end
and motor speed with one master and two slaves. of each semester. There were a total of 78 students who par-
ticipated in both pre- and post- self-evaluations. Students were
instructed to rank themselves with a number from 1 to 10 in the
IV. EVALUATION OF STUDENT LEARNING following areas, with 1 being least knowledgeable and 10 being
In addition to the official university teaching evaluation most knowledgeable: A1—Measurement system; A2—ADC,
for the course, anonymous student surveys were conducted at DAC; A3—Sensors; A4—Signal conditioning; A5—Digital fil-
the end of each semester to determine whether the learning ters; A6—Modbus; A7—LabVIEW. Here, “A” stands for area.
outcomes have been successfully achieved. The pedagogical Because the goal of the self-evaluations is to discover
issue of whether student learning of digital communication was whether the means for the before and after scores are signifi-
achieved by using LabVIEW in laboratories and course projects cantly different, the most appropriate analysis tool is the paired
was analyzed based on the survey data. Specific questions on t-test for each area with the following hypotheses:
use of LabVIEW in laboratories and course projects were (The knowledge level had the same av-
included in the survey. erage before and after the course for a particular area.)
Q1) Did the laboratories help you understand sensor circuits?
Q2) Did LabVIEW help you understand digital filtering? (The knowledge level after the course had
Q3) Did the labs help you understand analog input and output a higher average than before the course for a particular
using DAQ? area.)
Q4) Did the labs help you understand digital input and output Since the sample size of 78 was sufficiently large, according
using DAQ? to the Central Limit Theorem, the average can be approximated
Q5) Did LabVIEW help you understand the concepts of dig- by a Normal distribution. Therefore, there is no need to check
ital instrumentation and closed-loop control? for normality for the raw data in order to use the paired t-test.
Q6) Did LabVIEW help you understand Modbus and digital The mean and standard deviation for the difference between
communication protocols? the post- and pre-self-evaluations (pre- subtracted from post-)
Q7) a) Was the motor control project helpful in under- are summarized in Table III. The raw data are not shown here.
standing digital communication? It is worth mentioning that a few post-scores were lower than
b) Was the temperature control project helpful in un- the pre-scores, which is not reasonable. There are several pos-
derstanding digital communication? sible explanations for this phenomenon: Students forgot what
Q8) Did the labs help you in completing the course project? scores they gave for the pre-evaluation when they were doing
Q9) Are you satisfied with the laboratories? the post-evaluation, or students changed their evaluation criteria
Q10) Are you satisfied with the course project? over time. For example, one student gave himself a 10 in A2 in
Students were asked to answer all questions with the exception the pre-self-evaluation and a 7 in A2 in the post-self-evaluation.
of Q7, which has two parts, Q7a and Q7b. Q7a was only an- It may imply that the student originally thought he knew every-
swered by teams that worked on the motor control project, and thing about ADC/DAC, but after the course, realized that he re-
Q7b was only answered by teams that worked on the tempera- ally did not understand as much as he had previously thought. It
ture control project. The following five options were provided is possible but not very likely that, at the end of the semester, the
for each question: 1—Strongly disagree; 2—Disagree; 3—Nei- student forgot some knowledge he previously had. This type of
ther agree nor disagree; 4—Agree; 5—Strongly agree. The raw data has not been deleted or manipulated (for example, making
data are summarized in Table I. the difference equal to 0 in such a case).
The mean, standard deviation, and confidence intervals The paired t-test is to compare the following quantity to
for the mean and standard deviation for each question are :
summarized in Table II. The calculations were carried out
using Minitab. The statistical analysis of the raw data shows
that, overall, students were satisfied with the laboratories and (2)
course projects. They possessed a positive view of the role of
LabVIEW in learning digital communication and instrumen- where is the sample size and equal to 78 in this anal-
tation in general. Question 8 has the highest average (4.82) ysis, is the difference between the means of the post- and
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ZHAN et al.: EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION USING LabVIEW 7

TABLE II
STATISTICS FROM STUDENT SURVEY

TABLE III projects allow students to see how digital communication can
STATISTICS OF STUDENT SELF-EVALUATIONS be implemented in different systems.
The course projects are being extended to a microcontroller-
based printed circuit board design after the successful com-
pletion of the LabVIEW-based control systems. Students were
tasked to design a printed circuit board, including a microcon-
troller on the board, to replace the LabVIEW-based Modbus
pre-self-evaluations, is the standard deviation of the differ- slave. Instead of using National Instruments’s DAQ card, sensor
ence, and is the value in the t-distribution table [32]. circuits, signal conditioning circuits, and a microcontroller were
A 99% confidence level is used. The value in (2) can be used for data acquisition, Modbus communication, and control
easily calculated for A1–A7 using the data in Table III to be of the motor or the temperature chamber. This new component
, which are all much of the course project has created both opportunities and chal-
greater than . Therefore, with a confidence level lenges. The results are being monitored and analyzed.
of 99%, the null hypothesis is rejected, and the alternative Curriculum improvement efforts are being made to integrate
hypothesis is accepted for all seven areas. In other words, it the course projects in several courses within the EET program.
can be concluded with a 99% confidence level that the students’ The Modbus communication systems developed in ENTC 359
knowledge levels in all seven of the areas specified in the can be enhanced with wireless capability in a communication
student self-evaluation form (A1–A7) improved significantly course (ENTC 455). The control logic can be replaced by PID
throughout the course. controllers in a control systems course (ENTC 462) with the
focus on control design and performance improvement.
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
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[19] T. Perales, J. A. Morgan, and J. R. Porter, “A Labview FPGA toolkit
to teach digital logic design,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2009. Wei Zhan (M’91–SM’02) was born in China in 1963. He received the Bach-
[20] J. E. Globig, “An interdisciplinary, LabVIEW based, data acquisition elor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Beijing University of Aeronau-
and measurements course,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2003. tics and Astronautics, Beijing, China, in 1983, and the M.S. degree in systems
[21] J. R. Porter, J. Ochoa, and S. Tumati, “Linking simulation tools to lab- engineering and D.Sc. degree in systems science from Washington University
oratory experiments: Teaching design verification in engineering tech- in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA, in 1988 and 1991, respectively.
nology,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2002. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Electronics and Telecommu-
[22] O. Akinwale, L. Kehinde, K. P. Ayodele, A. M. Jubril, O. P. Jonah, S. nications Engineering Technology program, Texas A&M University, College
Ilori, and X. Chen, “A Labview-based on-line robotic arm for students’ Station, TX, USA. Before joining Texas A&M, he worked with TRW Auto-
laboratory,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2009. motive, Livonia, MI, USA; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA; and the
[23] S. Khan, F. Farahmand, and S. Moslehpour, “A Labview based inte- University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA. His research interests
grated virtual learning platform,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2010. include control system theory and applications to industry, system engineering,
[24] M. Ogot, G. Elliott, and N. Glumac, “An assessment of in-person robust design, modeling, simulation, quality control, optimization, and educa-
and remotely operated laboratories,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 92, no. 1, pp. tional research.
57–64, 2003. Dr. Zhan is a Senior Member of ASQ, a Senior Member of SAE, a Member
[25] E. K. Rézaei and S. R. Kolla, “Internet-based on/off controller using of ASEE, a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Michigan, and an
LabVIEW,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2003. ASQ certified Six Sigma Black Belt.
[26] M. Naghedolfeizi, S. Arora, and S. Garcia, “Survey of LabVIEW tech-
nologies for building Web/internet-enabled experimental setups,” in
Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2002.
[27] J. H. Arthur and M. R. Sexton, “Labview application: Energy labora-
tory upgrade,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. Conf., 2002. Jay R. Porter (M’00–SM’13) received the B.S. degree in electrical engi-
[28] R. G. Quinn, “The introductory engineering test, design and simu- neering, M.S. degree in physics, and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
lation laboratory,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 82, no. 4, pp. 224–226, 1993. from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, in 1987, 1989, and
[29] R. Barat, J. Federici, A. Johnson, H. Grebel, and T. Chang, “Optical 1993, respectively.
science and engineering curriculum at NJIT,” J. Eng. Educ., vol. 87, He is currently a Professor and the Program Director of the Electronics and
no. 5, pp. 575–582, 1998. Telecommunications Engineering Technology program, Texas A&M Univer-
[30] S. Cui, Y. Wang, Y. Zhang, and C. Akujuobi, “Laboratories enhance- sity. He is an author on 16 journal articles and over 70 conference proceedings.
ment with Labview based graphical development tools,” in Proc. ASEE His research interests include instrumentation and measurement, virtual instru-
Annu. Conf., 2008. mentation development, and magnetic resonance imaging.
[31] V. Lohani, P. Delgoshaei, and C. Green, “Integrating Labview and real- Dr. Porter is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education,
time monitoring into engineering instruction,” in Proc. ASEE Annu. as well as a licensed Engineer in the State of Texas.
Conf., 2009.
[32] B. Wortman, W. R. Richdson, G. Gee, M. Williams, T. Pearson, F.
Bensley, J. Patel, J. DeSimone, and D. R. Carlson, “The certified
six sigma black belt primer,” Quality Council of Indiana, West Terre Joseph A. Morgan (M’89) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering
Haute, IN, USA, 2001. from California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA, in 1975, and the M.S.
[33] B. Erwin, M. Cyr, and C. Rogers, “LEGO engineer and ROBOLAB: and D.E. degrees in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University, College
Teaching engineering with LabVIEW from kindergarten to graduate Station, TX, USA, in 1980 and 1983, respectively.
school,” Int. J. Eng. Educ., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 181–192, 2000. He is currently a Professor with the Electronics and Telecommunications En-
[34] J. R. Porter, J. A. Morgan, and W. Zhan, “Development of a “Smart” gineering Technology program, Texas A&M University. He has over 20 years of
sensor: An integrated instrumentation course project,” in Proc. ASEE military and industry experience in electronics and telecommunications systems
Annu. Conf., 2009. engineering. He joined the Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
[35] “LabVIEW User Manual,” National Instruments, Austin, TX, USA, Department in 1989 and has served as the Program Director of the Electronics
Apr. 2003. and Telecommunications Programs and as the Associate Department Head for
[36] Modbus-IDA, Hopkinton, MA, USA, “Modbus Applica- Operations. His education and research interests include project management,
tion Protocol Specification, V1.1b,” Dec. 28, 2006, pp. innovation and entrepreneurship, and embedded product/system development.
1–51 [Online]. Available: http://www.modbus.org/docs/ Dr. Morgan is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education,
Modbus_Application_Protocol_V1_1b.pdf as well as a licensed Engineer in the State of Texas.