A Remote lab for real-time digital signal processing

Digital signal processors and embedded microcontrollers form a vital part in modern multimedia, biomedical applications, and motor control, instrumentation applications, respectively. Recognizing this trend, digital signal processing courses are offered at both Bachelor's and Master's level in the engineering curriculum. Most DSP algorithms can be simulated on a computer, but further refinement is needed for implementation on a DSP and to be of practical use. This requires knowledge about implementation of DSP algorithms on hardware. With the advancement of DSP technology, a number of engineering colleges in India find it difficult to support and upgrade infrastructure for latest technologies. Also availability of trained teachers is always a challenge. To bridge the gap between the need and availability of the resources, a remote triggered DSP lab has been developed at IIT Bombay, as part of the Virtual Lab project. The purpose of the paper is to present the details of the work done towards the development of the remote real-time DSP Lab. This lab provides remote access (over the internet) to an experimental set-up consisting of DSP hardware (TI's DSK 6713 and DSK 5510) and input/output devices that the user can use to conduct real-time experiments. Multiple users can access the setup depending on the availability of hardware resources. The system has been developed using TI's code composer studio (CCS) as the backend and a web-based interface as the front-end to the remote user. This setup has been tested with a small subset of colleges.