Peers' evaluation of a reconfigurable IEEE1451.0-compliant and FPGA-based weblab

It is already more than 10 years that weblabs are seen as important resources to provide the experimental work required in engineering education. Several weblabs have been applied in engineering courses, but there are still unsolved problems related to the development of their infrastructures. For solving some of those problems, it was implemented a weblab with a reconfigurable infrastructure compliant with the IEEE1451.0 Std. and supported by Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. This paper presents the referred weblab, and provides and analyses a set of researchers' opinions about the implemented infrastructure, and the adopted methodology for the conduction of real experiments.

Reconfigurable IEEE1451-FPGA based weblab infrastructure

Weblabs are spreading their influence in Science and Engineering (S&E) courses providing a way to remotely conduct real experiments. Typically, they are implemented by different architectures and infrastructures supported by Instruments and Modules (I&Ms) able to be remotely controlled and observed. Besides the inexistence of a standard solution for implementing weblabs, their reconfiguration is limited to a setup procedure that enables interconnecting a set of preselected I&Ms into an Experiment Under Test (EUT). Moreover, those I&Ms are not able to be replicated or shared by different weblab infrastructures, since they are usually based on hardware platforms. Thus, to overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a standard solution that uses I&Ms embedded into Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs) devices. It is presented an architecture based on the IEEE1451.0 Std. supported by a FPGA-based weblab infrastructure able to be remotely reconfigured with I&Ms, described through standard Hardware Description Language (HDL) files, using a Reconfiguration Tool (RecTool).

FPGA-based weblab infrastructures guidelines and a prototype implementation example

Recent trends show an increasing number of weblabs, implemented at universities and schools, supporting practical training in technical courses and providing the ability to remotely conduct experiments. However, their implementation is typically based on individual architectures, unable of being reconfigured with different instruments/modules usually required by every experiment. In this paper, we discuss practical guidelines for implementing reconfigurable weblabs that support both local and remote control interfaces. The underlying infrastructure is based on reconfigurable, low-cost, FPGA-based boards supporting several peripherals that are used for the local interface. The remote interface is powered by a module capable of communicating with an Ethernet based network and that can either correspond to an internal core of the FPGA or an external device. These two approaches are discussed in the paper, followed by a practical implementation example.

Embedding instruments & modules into an IEEE1451-FPGA-Based Weblab infrastructure

Adopting standard-based weblab infrastructures can be an added value for spreading their influence and acceptance in education. This paper suggests a solution based on the IEEE1451.0 Std. and FPGA technology for creating reconfigurable weblab infrastructures using Instruments and Modules (I&Ms) described through standard Hardware Description Language (HDL) files. It describes a methodology for creating and binding I&Ms into an IEEE1451-module embedded in a FPGA-based board able to be remotely controlled/accessed using IEEE1451-HTTP commands. At the end, an example of a step-motor controller module bond to that IEEE1451-module is described.