Virtual bench for online real time digital signal processing students

Due to the fast growing market for embedded DSP applications, there is a need for electrical engineers with expertise in the field. This paper is concerned with how to expand the Real-Time DSP course currently offered to on-campus students at Arizona State University so that it can be offered to online students working in industry or enrolled at other academic institutions. In contrast to many courses, the real-time DSP course includes a complementary hardware lab that is necessary for acquiring the programming techniques for mapping algorithms into DSP architectures. In this work, a "virtual bench" is proposed enabling online students to access with ease all available hardware and software tools in the lab via the web using a set of network protocols, power management units, and circuitry for automatic I/O source switching.