Introducing computer tools into a first course in electricalengineering

At a school where engineering students have immediate access to a personal computer, it is important that they become familiar with that tool early in their studies. In introductory engineering courses it is also important that the students learn to perceive the computer as a tool and not as an end in itself. Achieving these goals requires a careful integration of computer usage into such courses by the instructors. In this paper we examine this issue in the context of a first course in electrical engineering that has been taught at the US Naval Academy, and we present specific examples of assignments we have used in our effort to accomplish these goals     

Introducing VLSI computer-aided design into the EE curriculum: acase study

The authors describe a case study at Purdue University's School of Electrical Engineering in the successful integration of VLSI CAD (computer-aided design) into both the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. The courses in VLSI chip design use the Manassas VLSI Interactive System for Automation (MVISA), a CAD program that implements all stages in the VLSI design process including logic entry (schematic capture), logic simulation, timing analysis, design rule checking, placement of cells, and automatic and manual wiring. The successful integration was due to several factors, including university-industry-government cooperation; the development of a comprehensive set of interactive tutorials and notes describing the lab procedures and VLSI issues considered in the class; and a coherent, structured approach to teaching system design as well as the use of CAD tools in this process. Modern educational techniques, including computer-aided instruction and videotaped lectures on VLSI, also played a part in the development of the CAD courses     

Experience with teaching black-box testing in a computer science/software engineering curriculum

Software testing is a popular and important technique for improving software quality. There is a strong need for universities to teach testing rigorously to students studying computer science or software engineering. This paper reports the experience of teaching the classification-tree method as a black-box testing technique at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, and Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. It aims to foster discussion of appropriate teaching methods of software testing.     

Introducing real world design problems into the undergraduateelectromagnetic curriculum

General-purpose CAD (computer-aided design) programs have been used to teach electromagnetics to undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon University. The focus of the instruction is the use of real-world design problems to teach basic electromagnetics concepts. Students use computers to set up and solve a variety of electrostatics, magnetostatics, eddy current, and microwave problems. This gives them the opportunity to visualize EM fields and to interact with real-world devices and issues. Experience shows that solving such problems by means of electromagnetic CAD tools boosts student motivation and leads to a better grasp of key technical concepts     

Rapid computer-aided design method for fast-acting solenoidactuators

This paper describes a general method for preliminary design of fast-acting solenoid actuators. Moving armature, drive circuit, and nonlinearities are modeled, as well as eddy currents for solid iron devices. The electromagnetic model is obtained by computing two magnetization characteristics corresponding to the extreme positions of the armature and a novel interpolation function for the intermediate positions. This function, characterizing the magnetic configuration of the actuator, is computed analytically and leads also to an analytical formulation of the magnetic force. In order to achieve extremely fast computation, eddy currents are modeled through a new type of electric equivalent network, derived directly from Maxwell's equations and taking into account the actual BH nonlinearities, moving armature, and device geometry. The method is demonstrated on a pot-core solenoid actuator and compares favorably with finite-element results and measurements     

Integrating formal verification into an advanced computer architecture course

This paper presents a sequence of three projects on design and formal verification of pipelined and superscalar processors: 1) a single-issue, five-stage DLX (an academic processor used widely for teaching pipelined execution and defined by Hennessy and Patterson in the first edition of their graduate textbook); 2) an extension of the DLX with exceptions and branch prediction; and 3) a dual-issue superscalar DLX. The projects were integrated into two editions of an advanced computer architecture course that was offered at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in the summer and fall 2002 and was taught to 67 students (25 of whom were undergraduates) in a way that required them to have no prior knowledge of formal methods. Preparatory homework problems included an exercise on design and formal verification of a staggered Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU), pipelined in the style of the integer ALUs in the Intel Pentium 4. The processors were designed and formally verified with a tool flow that was used to formally verify the M/spl middot/CORE processor at Motorola and detected bugs.     

计算机辅助电气设计系统在供电所的实践

1　计算机辅助电气设计系统开发的必要性以前 ,供电所设计部门的设计工作主要依赖手工完成。在设计工作中存在的简单重复劳动过多、手工绘制的设计图纸质量较差、设计进度难以控制等问题 ,成为影响工作进度的主要原因之一。为此设计部门引进并应用了先进的计算机技术 ,开发了计算机辅助电气设计系统 ,以提高设计工作的劳动效率及产品质量。2　计算机辅助电气设计系统开发的基本设想由于供电所设计部门所从事的设计工作 ,尤其是业扩工程具有较为明显的相似特点 ,易于把握。虽然每个工作人员的工作量很大 ,但就每个具体设计来说 ,其内涵和操作…     

Problem-based learning as an effective tool for teaching computer network design

This paper addresses the challenge of developing techniques for the effective teaching of computer network design. It reports on the experience of using the technique of problem-based learning as a key pedagogical method for teaching practical network design within the context of a Master's program module in data telecommunications and networks at the University of Salford, Salford, Greater Manchester, U.K. A two-threaded approach was adopted that comprised a problem-based learning thread and a conventional lecture thread. The problem-based learning thread within the module comprised sessions designed to place the students in the position of network design consultants who are introduced to scenarios that have a high degree of realism in which a client has specific business requirements that can be met through the adoption of a network solution. In this way, the problem-based learning thread allows the students to develop their design skills, while the lecture thread uses traditional teaching methods to allow students to develop their understanding of key network components and architectures. A formal evaluation of this approach has been carried out and demonstrated a very effective and realistic learning experience for the students. Therefore, the authors propose that problem-based learning is an ideal pedagogical tool for the teaching of computer network design.     

Deterrents to women taking computer science courses

The United States faces a shortage of computer scientists. Despite the current economic downturn, the most recent estimate indicates a labor force shortage of IT professionals. The shortage of IT professionals, and especially of computer scientists, provides impetus for increasing the representation of women in computer science (CS). We examine why so few students, and particularly few women, choose to enter the beginning phase of the CS pipeline by choosing to try out CS courses. Women are seriously under-represented at this early juncture of the CS pipeline. If we are serious about making CS a more inclusive field, we need to make an impact at this early juncture. This is not to belittle the laudable efforts to reduce attrition among women CS majors. However, for maximum effect, interventions to increase the flow of women into the CS pipeline also need to occur before women declare their major.     

Power supply design in the undergraduate curriculum

Even though the electronic power supply is one of the most commonly used circuits, its design is often mentioned only briefly in undergraduate curricula. The approximate analyses in most textbooks fail to cover the RMS current requirements of the transformer, and they are not sufficiently detailed for the use in the design of power supplies. The common case of low-voltage ripple is seldom addressed. This paper presents a power supply analysis suitable for design in the undergraduate curriculum. By using ordinary scientific calculators available to most students, it is possible to design common power supplies and to determine the various nonsinusoidal currents and voltages in the power network. Straightforward methods are provided to determine the peak and RMS current requirements of the components     

Incorporating forecast uncertainties into EENS for wind turbine studies

The rapid increase in wind power generation around the world has stimulated the development of applicable technologies to model the uncertainties of wind power resulting from the stochastic nature of wind and fluctuations of demand for integration of wind turbine generators (WTGs). In this paper the load and wind power forecast errors are integrated into the expected energy not served (EENS) formulation through determination of probabilities using the normal distribution approach. The effects of forecast errors and wind energy penetration in the power system are traversed. The impact of wind energy penetration on system reliability, total cost for energy and reserve procurement is then studied for a conventional power system. The results show a degradation of system reliability with significant wind energy penetration in the generation system. This work provides a useful insight into system reliability and economics for the independent system operator (ISO) to deploy energy/reserve providers when WTGs are integrated into the existing power system.     

Gender and race in predicting achievement in computer science

In the study described here, 65 prospective computer or information science majors worked through a tutorial on the basics of Perl. Eighteen students were African American. All actions were recorded and time-stamped, allowing us to investigate the relationship among six factors that we believed would predict performance in an introductory computer science (CS) course (as measured by course grade) and how much students would learn from the tutorial (as measured by the difference between pre-test and post-test performance). These factors are: preparation (SAT score, number of previous CS courses taken, and pretest score), time spent on the tutorial as a whole and on individual chapters, amount and type of experimentation, programming accuracy and/or proficiency, approach to materials that involve mathematical formalisms, and approach to learning highly unfamiliar material (pattern-matching procedures). Gender and race differences with respect to these factors were also investigated.     

Experiences in threading UML throughout a computer science program

The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, decided to standardize its computer science program on the unified modeling language (UML) for all software design representations. Converting the appropriate courses to support formal teaching or reinforcement of UML concepts was planned as a phased approach over four academic years. Formal UML instruction was planned for Computer Science 1 courses and the senior two-course software engineering capstone sequence. Reinforcement of UML would be in the intervening courses. Once implementation began, it became apparent that a prolonged period between formal blocks of instruction was insufficient. Instead, some additional courses were redesigned to support formal UML instruction. The end result was a richer and deeper exposure to UML than anticipated over the same timeframe.     

Incorporating a multi-criteria decision procedure into the combineddynamic programming/production simulation algorithm for generationexpansion planning

A multiobjective optimization approach to generation expansion planning is presented. The approach is obtained by adding a new multicriteria decision (MCD) procedure to the conventional algorithm which combines dynamic programming with a production simulation method. The MCD procedure can help decision-makers weigh the relative importance of multiple attributes associated with the decision alternatives and find the near-best compromise solution efficiently at each optimization step of the conventional algorithm. Practical applications of the approach to evaluating the feasibility of the fourth nuclear power plant of Taiwan is presented, demonstrating its effectiveness and limitations     

水电站计算机监控系统与微机五防的整合设计

将微机五防系统嵌入到水电站计算机监控系统中,可以大大提供电站的安全运行水平。论文以工程实例描述两个系统的数据联系,通信规约,说明了采用OPC技术设计通信服务器解决监控系统与微机五防系统的数据交换的兼容性问题,这种整合设计在实践中取得了很好的效果。     

Introducing HIV/AIDS education into the electrical engineering curriculum at the University of Pretoria

This paper describes how HIV/AIDS education is being introduced into the curriculum of the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Third- and fourth-year students were provided with an HIV/AlDS Educational CD developed at the university. Their knowledge of the subject was tested via two quizzes-one written before they were exposed to the material on the CD and one after. In addition, a mathematical HIV/AIDS model is being incorporated into a third-year control systems course. This model is used to illustrate standard control systems engineering concepts, such as linearization, system stability, feedback, and dynamic compensation. This paper is an example of how topical nonengineering material can effectively be made part of a high-level undergraduate engineering course. Students benefit not only from the topical nature of the subject, but also from an improved understanding of control engineering concepts which can be applied to many different fields.