The REAL Concept

The Origin Story

Electrical Engineering students taking engineering electrodynamics at the undergraduate level often come away with the impression that the topic is abstract, mathematical, and will be of little practical use to them. Even after taking two semesters of the subject, students are often not able to see how what they have learned will help them design interesting products or systems. In contrast, after taking one or two semesters of subjects such as analog circuits, digital circuits, or control systems, a student can design and build a wide variety of interesting circuits and systems using widely available components.

One type of electromagnetic component that is practical for students to design and build is an antenna. Antennas can be simulated and analyzed using relatively inexpensive design software, and can be made using techniques such as elements printed on circuit boards, and metal and dielectric parts that can be cut and assembled with hand tools.

Many Electrical Engineering programs already offer courses on antennas, and these courses are increasing in importance because of the growth in the wireless industry. These courses predominantly use software for antenna design and analysis, with few offering project courses to actually build and test antennas. A primary reason for not building antennas as part of a course is that some type of antenna range is needed to measure the radiation pattern of an antenna. Only a relatively small number of universities have such a facility, and fewer still have a facility that is available for undergraduate education. In some instances, creative faculty have set up simple systems consisting of a turntable, microwave sources, and detectors in a regular laboratory to illustrate the basic concepts of antenna patterns, but these are not available in all programs and are not very precise.

The Remote Educational Antenna Laboratory (REAL) originated as a collaborative project between Carnegie Mellon University and San Diego State University, and was established to encourage the use of antenna construction projects in undergraduate education. In 2011, the primary remote antenna laboratory was relocated to North Carolina State University.

Goals of the Project

Presentations

• Finalist for the 1996 Smithsonian Computerworld Leadership Award in the Education and Academia Organization Category, nomination documentation, award certificate, plaque.
• Daniel Stancil, "The Virtual Lab Experience," presentation to the Hewlett-Packard Educators Advisory Council, Aug. 12-14, 1996.

Presentations

• "The Pros and Cons of Remote Labs," Hewlett-Packard Engineering Educator, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall 1999, pp. 8-9. Article featuring the CMU Remote Laboratory.
• Daniel Stancil, "Use of Remote Experimentation in the Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Curriculum at CMU," presentation to Remote Experiments in Science Education Workshop, ALCOM Science & Technology Center, Kent Statue University, October 28, 2000.
• Daniel D. Stancil, Nathaniel Gist, and Yi Jiang, "REAL: The Remote Educational Antenna Laboratory," IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, June 2007, pp. 5399-5402.
• Satish K. Sharma, Sunil K. Rajgopal, and Madhu S. Gupta, "Development of Antenna Starter Kits for Remote Education Antenna Laboratory (REAL) to Enhance Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Education," 2007 URSI Symposium presentation, July 2007.

For papers relating to the Wireless Network Emulator, see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~emulator/.

Laboratories

The following labs were published in HP Educator's Corner CD, Version 2.0, June, 1998. These are the labs used in 18-439 Advanced Laboratory Technique sat CMU during the Fall 95 and Fall 96 semesters. Labs 1-6 familiarize students with techniques and instrumentation, and Labs 7 and 8 are to be completed remotely.

1. HP VEE Virtual Lab 1: Introduction to Instrumentation
2. HP VEE Virtual Lab 2: HP VEE and Timbuktu
3. HP VEE Virtual Lab 3: Direct I/O Communication
4. HP VEE Virtual Lab 4: Handling and Displaying Data
5. HP VEE Virtual Lab 5: Capture that Waveform!
6. HP VEE Virtual Lab 6: Magnitudes, Phases, Everywhere!
7. HP VEE Virtual Lab 7: Martian Rescue
8. HP VEE Virtual Lab 8: The Black Box