A Remote Laboratory for USRP-Based Software Defined Radio

Electrical and computer engineering graduates need practical working skills with real-world electronic devices, which are addressed to some extent by hands-on laboratories. Deployment capacity of hands-on laboratories is typically constrained due to insufficient equipment availability, facility shortages, and lack of human resources for in-class support and maintenance. At the same time, at many sites, existing experimental systems are usually underutilized due to class scheduling bottlenecks. Nowadays, online education gains popularity and remote laboratories have been suggested to broaden access to experimentation resources. Remote laboratories resolve many problems as various costs can be shared, and student access to instrumentation is facilitated in terms of access time and locations. Labs are converted to homeworks that can be done without physical presence in laboratories. Even though they are not providing full sense of hands-on experimentation, remote labs are a viable alternatives for underserved educational sites. This paper studies remote modality of USRP-based radio-communication labs offered by National Instruments ( NI). The labs are offered to graduate and undergraduate students and tentative assessments support feasibility of remote deployments.