This paper presents EduCOM, a graphical language for teaching and learning digital communication systems. In EduCOM students build graphical models (i.e., block diagrams) of digital communication transmitters, channels, and receivers. Then EduCOM creates the shell of a C/Cþþ code realization of the graphical model, but it leaves the implementation of each block empty so that students are required to implement the functionality of the blocks in a low-level programming language such as C/Cþþ. Therefore, EduCOM goes beyond passive dragÀdrop-connect style activities and forces students to think more deeply about each operation performed on the signals in the system, and preliminary assessment results with a small set of students bear this point out. Students indicated that the mixture of graphical modeling and low-level programming provided by EduCOM is an improvement over pure graphical modeling or pure low-level programming in helping them learn about communication systems. ß
Graphical modeling software tools have become commonplace in educational laboratories associated with courses in signal processing and communication systems. This paper explains that the purely graphical approach to modeling and simulation can be improved upon by combining graphical modeling with some low-level programming tasks. To implement this philosophy, a new software tool called EduCOM was developed. EduCOM offers a graphical modeling environment to construct system models. It also translates a graphical model into C/C++ code that can be compiled into an executable to simulate the model. Students are required to program the functionality of important blocks in their models such as lters, minimum-distance hard-decision rules, and look-up-tables. Anecdotal evidence is provided indicating that this approach offers an improved learning experience over pure graphical modeling approaches.
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