Preparation Of A Virtual Toolkit For Communication Systems

Abstract

Communication Systems is offered at senior level as a three-credit, one semester course at Dordt College. Due to the number of topics covered, it turns out to be a very compact course with little time for experimentation. However, the course content is rich with processes that are best described by block diagrams which should come alive as students implement these processes and have a chance to test signals at each block. In order to facilitate such an experimental environment with limited institutional resources and student time for hardware implementations, a virtual toolkit of computer simulations was developed using LabVIEW. LabVIEW's graphical interface with live help windows and other visual feedback rendered this project achievable and enjoyable even for a freshman student programmer. This paper will recount the project both from a professor's point of view and from that of a freshman student, who did not know about the programming language nor about the processes she was to simulate at the onset of the project. The paper will also describe the toolkit prepared to demonstrate a wide variety of topics covered in a typical communication systems course and present some examples of the virtual instruments (VIs) developed.