Overview:

Image and signal processing laboratory experiments support major study courses of the upper division undergraduate programs in electrical engineering and computer engineering at Cal Poly. They offer students powerful techniques and tools to apply, synthesize, design, simulate and implement state-of-the-art solutions to modern engineering problems. The signal and image processing laboratories provide hands-on experience in a way that integrates theory, software, hardware and applications. Such capabilities in image and signal processing are critical to technical leadership of US industry. A design project in image and signal processing integrates with several other topics in electrical engineering. The integration can be mutual. Developing such applications and hardware tools supplements activities in microprocessors, communication, and control courses. At the same time, image and signal processing give the mentioned courses a real life flavor of "learn as you need."

Cal Poly’s dedicated DSP lab is currently equipped with 8 C6000 EVMs.  The lab serves approximately 80 students per year. Most of these students take a senior-level DSP course as a technical elective (EE419). This is a hands-on experience in DSP systems. The course covers digital filter design. Students study a variety of design techniques and then implement and test their filters on TI boards. This experience culminates with a final project in which students must analyze real signals in order to define filter specifications, they then pick a filter design method, design + implement + test the filters.

Requirements for the EE419 final project are defined such that an entire system must include more than just filter(s). Students must then define components that interface to the DSP processor. An important learning objective in this project is for students to appreciate how DSP processors can be made part of an integrated solution to a system. The signal analysis and filter design are part of this objective, as is the overall system design that integrates the DSP into a larger overall system. This gives the students a glimpse of the entire design-implementation cycle of DSP-based products.

Current Problems with the Laboratory:

In order to increase the quality of the “learn-by-doing” experience of students in the DSP lab at Cal Poly, an update of the current software is needed.  By upgrading the Code Composer Studio Software present in the lab, students can be exposed to the latest technology, better preparing them for their move into the workforce.  Updating the DSP lab to include the latest fixes and improvements in Code Composer Studio will also improve the quality of the Senior Projects and Masters Theses developed using Texas Instruments’ DSP products.

A full upgrade of the DSP lab would require 8 licenses for Code Composer Studio.  Additional licenses would permit easy expansion of the lab to better serve the students in the course, as well as students wishing to develop Senior Projects involving TI DSPs.  We would also like to expand the number of stations in the DSP lab by three, if possible. Additionally, one of the codecs on an existing EVM has failed, and we would like to replace this unit with a new DSK.

If available, we would also be interested in acquiring an imaging TDK. This would be used for evaluation purposes – for possible inclusion in our EE528, Image Processing course. Currently this course uses a PC-based environment for students to write their programs. This includes image capture, processing and display, but is not real-time.

The EE Department is in the process of a major renovation to our curriculum. This will include a long-needed laboratory course for our Junior-level introductory course in discrete systems. This curriculum has not received final approval yet, but this is anticipated sometime in the next academic year. With this change, we could bring ‘DSP to the Masses’. This lecture + lab course would be required for all EE majors; currently this is 150+ per year, with enrollment expected to increase.

For new hardware donations, we would like to use DSK-style products. These will have a longer productive lifetime in the lab environment thanks to the use of a standard (parallel port, or serial) interface. This relaxes the requirements on the support PC that runs CCS, as it doesn’t have to allow for a full-size PCI card. This provides greater flexibility; as PCs can be swapped in and out more readily.

The DSKs are also superior because of the visibility of the DSP processor. The processor is not hidden inside the PC enclosure (as with an EVM). This is beneficial for students. The students can see that there are no RLC elements present for their filter, just a DSP processor doing arithmetic. This provides a much better appreciation for what the DSP does, and a better understanding of the job CCS does in programming the embedded processor.

The DSK is also preferred because of the good access to the daughter card interface. We are interested in introducing some new variations on our experiments that could involve this interface. A simple example would be a tone detection system that would output digital signals on the daughter card port when certain tones are present. This could be accomplished via a small protoboard mounted near the daughter card. Students could use digital logic chips to decode an address and latch data signals. While simple in functionality, this experiment would embrace a much broader suite of learning objectives. These could include topics in digital electronics, computer/DSP architecture, board and buss architectures, and computer interfacing.

Note we ‘bullet-proof’ the DSKs with Plexiglas enclosures. These still provide access to the board ports, and increase lifetime of the equipment. And, the Plexiglas doesn’t hide the DSP processor from view.