Requirements for Remote RF Laboratory Applications: An Educators' Perspective

Current Trends in Remote and Virtual Lab Engineering. Where are we in 2013?

“…However, the main problem today is that there are no standards or recommendations regarding the requirements for such equipment (electrical signals, communicational protocols and compatibility of software). There are merely some suggestions ( [35][36][37] [39] and CESN [40]) are merely descriptions of sensors, other like OntoSensor [41] are also capable of describing 'components', or like OOSTethys 'processes' in addition. Their conclusion gives the statement that a "combination of OntoSensor and the CSIRO ontology represents the current limit of expressive capability for semantic sensors" [38], but none of them is able to deal with the whole context of sensor descriptions.…”

A new RF and Microwave Engineering course enriched with advanced technologies

“…In traditional courses, the only chance to conduct laboratory experiments is via demonstrations in a laboratory. As also addressed in the literature, acquiring enough laboratory equipment and establishing an experimental facility to support and demonstrate the application of the theory represents in this field is a considerable challenge [10][11][12][13]. In such implementations, students may struggle to build connections between the theory they have learned and practical applications in the laboratory.…”

“…Nowadays, educational and training organizations, particularly universities, are frequently using Internet technologies to enhance and supplement traditional face-to-face education. For example, remote laboratory platforms enable learners to access physical instruments at a distant location and perform experiments remotely on the Internet [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Hence, a remote laboratory application in the RF domain seems to be a very critical tool in order to improve and support current educational environments.…”

“…Remote experiments also provide fundamental knowledge in electromagnetic wave propagation, knowledge about the analytical and graphical methods used in deduction of formulas used in microwaves, the ability to make correlations between physical phenomena (what is happening and why), and the ability to handle high complexity measurement devices (e.g., VNA). Students perform these experiments any time and any where through the remote laboratory environment (ERRL) [13,14]. The ERRL provides RF and microwave remote experiments † that are integrated into this course.…”

Distance laboratory applications ERRL: A study on radio communication in electronic field

“…In most of vocational training schools, there are many radio communications related courses for teaching the theory but not enough laboratory equipment/experiments to support and demonstrate the application of the theory. As a consequence, these courses are supported by practical studies [3]. They also tend to have very limited opportunities to analyze the data collected by means of the experiments mathematically: usually the measurement device itself is unable to deal with a large amount of data.…”