An integral part of the current effort to completely overhaul the four-year undergraduate curriculum is the creation of a Virtual Laboratory, which integrates real-world experimentation, through the design and construction of electronic and digital systems, with theoretical and simulation-based analyses of the system being designed. The laboratory experience accomplishes two important goals: first, it gives the student a feel for working with real hardware and creates an awareness of the discrepancies between theory and practice; second, it provides an opportunity for developing intuition that comes only through practice. The laboratory includes PC equipment for data acquisition and real-time control, PC-based analysis and simulation capabilities, and network connections to allow further offline analysis outside of laboratory hours.
