Mihajlo Katona: A unified platform for engineering education in Embedded Systems Scientix European Conference, 6-8 May 2011, Brussels

1. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
A Unified Platform For
Engineering Education In
Embedded Systems
Mihajlo Katona, Nikola Teslic and Miodrag Temerinac
Scientix European Conference
6-8 May 2011,
Brussels, Belgium

2. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Embedded System?
Embedded systems are the invisible electronics and
software that bring intelligence to objects,
processes and devices.

3. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Introduction
 Growing need for embedded systems engineers
 Significance of laboratory work in electrical
engineering education
 Active learning laboratory-based pedagogy
 Lab/project based courses
 Constant updates are needed to keep the course
relevant
 Problems

4. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
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Commercial education boards
Digital design: 100€ - 20,000 €
Microcontrollers: 70€ - 5,000 €
DSP processors: 400€ - 6,000 €
Enormous number of options !

5. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Academic feedback
 Feedback received from global faculty and students
across North America, Europe and Asia
 Detected barriers in adopting laboratory-based
active learning pedagogy
 Too much time needed to learn a new tool for every
class. Tools are complex, only a subset is needed.
 Too much time to guide disparate design projects.
 Design tools may need a lot of support. Many issues in
software installation, revision, licensing and conflicts.
 Facilities for design and prototyping are hard to
acquire & maintain, very little reuse across courses.
 Long cycle time to acquire parts and fabricate
prototypes.

6. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Motivation
 Define an approach to unifying a learning platform
for embedded systems related lab based
engineering courses
 Target
 increase efficiency of lab based education
 Idea
 use a single comprehensive platform for the
complete curriculum

7. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
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Unified platform approach
 Designed to cover all aspects of
embedded systems learning
 Digital system design
 Computer system design,
hardware & software
 Digital signal processing of audio, video and
data signal streams in real-time
 Computer networks and interfaces
 System integration

8. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
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Unified approach targets
1.Provide platform for cross-curriculum educational
support in embedded computer engineering
2.Create universal
curriculum with
lab examples for
learning process
in the area of
embedded
computer
engineering

9. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Board architecture (TLL5000 pilot)
 Based on FPGA
device
 A number of
peripherals and
interfaces
 ARM based
housekeeping
processor
 Great expansion
capabilities

10. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
TLL5000
 TLL5000 development system provides
education of students during entire curriculum
in basic electrical and computer engineering
studies
 Already in educational process on
 University of Novi Sad,
Faculty of Technical Sciences, Serbia
 University of Texas-Austin, Austin, TX, USA
 University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Madison, WI, USA
 College of Engineering, Needham, MA, USA
 I.I.I.T.-Bangalore, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

11. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Academic experience
 The University of Novi Sad is one of the two leading
universities in Serbia
 Study group for Computer Engineering and
Computer Communication in the Faculty of
Technical Sciences
 practical exercises play an important role with 15
courses having practical exercises as mandatory
 Over the years we have used different platforms for
different courses
 We usually needed 3 or 4 out of 15 laboratory
exercise for platform introduction and
familiarization with development environment
 which is a 20-30% overhead on top of class learning
time

12. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Academic experience
 To improve learning efficiencies, it was decided to
use the developed platform across all embedded
systems related courses.
 In current curriculum the design platform is used at
 Digital Design Principles (2nd
year)
 Computer Architectures (3rd
year) and
 Advanced Chapters in Digital Design (3rd
year)
 Introduction of the platform required only mild
modifications to the covered courses

13. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Students Perspective

14. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Additional Information
 Ravel, M.; Chang, M.; McDermott, M.; Morrow, M.; Teslic, N.;
Katona, M.; Bapat, J., 2009, A Cross-Curriculum Open
Design Platform Approach to Electronic and Computing
Systems Education, IEEE International Conference on
Microelectronic Systems Education, pp.69 – 72
 Majstorovic D., Neborovski E., Katona M., 2010, A Cross-
Curriculum Embedded Engineering Learning Platform,
33rd International Convention on Information and
Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics
(MIPRO 2010/CE), pp. 283-288
 Kastelan I., Katona M., Majstorovic D., Neborovski E., 2011,
Students Perspective of the Embedded Engineering
Learning Platform - a Case Study in Digital Design, 34th
International Convention MIPRO 2011/CE, May 23–27, 2011.,
Opatija, Croatia, accepted for publication

15. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Conclusion
 We presented an approach to unifying a learning
platform for lab based courses in engineering
related to embedded systems.
 It is based on the developed platform designed to
cover a complete process of embedded systems
learning.
 Academic experience justified the approach.
 As expected, positive effects were more
pronounced in later courses.

16. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Future work
 We plan to introduce a new late undergraduate
project based course that will integrate all student
knowledge from embedded system design.
 Hardware-software co-design
 Emphasis on system integration
 Another direction of the future work is to prepare a
teaching platform redesign needed to keep up with
constant advance in technology.

17. University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences
research in service of innovation
Thank you for your attention
www.rt-rk.uns.ac.rs
Mihajlo.Katona@rt-rk.uns.ac.rs
Supported by
www.rt-rk.com