Abstract:

Control systems engineering (CSE) and digital signal processing (DSP) are the close related branches of engineering, both subjects are in demand in the modern technical world. Widespread usage of the digital equipment in all fields of industry such as transport, medicine, manufacture's control, entertainment and many others stimulates technical universities to improve education methodology in the field of teaching undergraduate students.
In this paper, the authors offer unique practical method of teaching undergraduate students in the framework of integration training course, which include three main sections: control systems engineering, digital signal processing and signals modeling. The main benefit of combining the traditionally independent courses is to demonstrate relations between disciplines using practical examples. To be prepared for the course students need to have a deep mathematical background and programming skills to understand the basic principles of automatic control theory, mathematical modeling and digital signal processing.
Also, this article describes the methodology of the course's developing, which consists of lesson's plan and technical requirements of educational platform. The toolkit is based on National Instruments (NI) PXI-platform. The main feature of the course is a student team research work. It means that one NI toolkit is intended for the teaching of 4-8 members of students' team.
The hardware and software parts are described in details. The provided set of NI modules contain analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, field-programmable gate array, digital interfaces, relays and have allowed authors to design special laboratory toolkit of two interconnected identical PXI-chassis devices supported by software. The first device is been used as the control system with DSP-module and the second one simulates the environmental sensors' signals. The LabVIEW implemented software part provides unique educational instrument for teachers, because it supports teachers and students by prototypes and initial software for the quick start.
The article presents the educational toolkit based on NI PXI-platform and original method of practical teaching of the integration course of CSE, DSP and signal simulation. The course involves students into the actual scientific collaborative research with the financial help of the Russian Federal Ministry of Education (Project # 2.7782.2017/BC). The students acquire skills of hardware programming, design control and simulation systems, develop software for DSP devices, verify and analyze the results in real-time mode and understand the main principles of effective teamwork. More than 10 years of teaching experience of the authors allow to speak about the success of this teaching method. The results of the students' quantitative survey complete the article.

Keywords:

Control systems engineering, digital signal processing, educational process, signal simulation, hardware programming, National Instruments, LABview.