INTEGRATION OF NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS MULTISIM AND MATHSOFT MATHCAD INTO A DIGITAL COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM

Technology program texts that seek to teach digital communication fundamentals follow basic developments that can be modeled in laboratory classes using computer-based electronics laboratory simulators and computer-based symbolic mathematics systems. For technology programs, this is particularly important as the laboratory work reinforces foundational data communication time domain and frequency domain concepts that may not be readily observed from lecture-only courses. Further, these labs allow students to validate concepts seen in lecture, homework and reading assignments. Additionally, these labs allow students to use digital devices found in earlier course work, such as digital logic. Finally, these labs are meant to complement lectures and not meant to replace laboratory experiments involving actual laboratory digital communication hardware. It is acknowledged that the presence of hardware in the laboratory is vital to the mission of technology education. National Instruments Multisim is the chosen electronics laboratory simulator for this work. Of special interest in the design of the labs are Multisim's high order capabilities. These allow students to create system level solutions within the setting of a two hour or three hour time period. Mathsoft's Mathcad is the chosen computer-based symbolic mathematics system. Of value to the lab setting, Mathcad is user-friendly and allows the user to setup and complete work within a short time. It preserves the mathematical context of the user's work through its rich symbolic-graphics capabilities. These advantages of Multisim and Mathcad use are discussed in the paper. Finally, it is shown that both Multisim and Mathcad, through print functions and screen captures allow the student to produce notes and illustrations that will complement their notes from lectures and their textbook contents (aside from actual lab report generation). This paper will detail the laboratory solutions that have been developed to address such topics as signal representation in the time and frequency domain, effects of noise and attenuation on digital signals, channel capacity and bandwidth, spectral and power efficiencies, bit error rate and power efficiency, digital encodings and their time domain and frequency domain characteristics, analog encodings of digital data, analog-to-digital conversion and quantization effects and remedies, and spread spectrum encoding-decoding techniques. The solutions will be framed within the context of illustrating fundamental digital communication principles by use of Multisim and Mathcad. Features and tools of Multisim and Mathcad that are particularly helpful to students will be discussed on an individual and collective lab basis.