A new remote laboratory for hardware experiment with shared resources and service management

A new remote laboratory system for hardware experiment has been developed It employs shared resources and enhanced service management scheme based on the Web Services. Wide spread use of the Internet and broadband remote network access capability to the home, motivated us to develop a seamless remote and actual hardware laboratory for hardware design laboratory course. Unlike existing virtual laboratories, which only simulate actual experiments, the proposed remote laboratory utilizes actual hardware and actual measurement tools in a time sharing fashion. Hardware experimental environment is usually treated as an exclusive resource, for single user usage. However, the actual test run time is rather short and most of the time is spent for CAD preparation and post-experiment analysis, leaving those precious resources remain idle. The combinatorial use of FPGA/PC connected test hardware and PC-based measurement equipments such as logic analyzer or pattern generator has make it possible to develop a remote multi-user time-sharing hardware experiment system, where students can perform actual experiments using actual hardware equipments and tools concurrently. As all students are equipped with high-performance Laptop PCs, CPU intensive tasks such as CAD schematic/HDL design entry, logic simulation, FPGA compilation, or post-analysis can be off-loaded from the server host and can be performed by each student's client Laptop PC. Thus, the server can concentrate on the service management tasks, such as course management, self learning course guide, and hardware resource managements. The Web-services-based course material distribution, course guidance and report collection system are also developed to realize the remote-laboratory self e-learning system. The prototype system is under-construction, and will be used for the third grade CS students from year 2005.