Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processing Lab is set up in our college in the month of January, 2012. Quite a good number of activities are going on in this lab with the involvement of both faculty and students. We have conducted two training programs for the students and the kits provided by them are later used to teach a course work for Third Year B. Tech ECE students.
Courses Taught Using TI Platform
- The TINA simulation tool is used in the course “Electronic Circuit Analysis”, which is being taught for the second year Electronics and Communication Engineering students. The students are trained in using the tool to design and simulate various basic analog electronic circuits like amplifiers and oscillators with transistors. The course work continued till the end of March, 2012. The students learnt to make the ac and dc analysis for the circuits developed by them using this tool. This tool is found to be very useful for the students as it enables them to analyze designs through simulations and allows appropriate modifications to get the best results for hardware implementation.
- The Third year ECE students are learning to work on the Analog Starter Kits as a part of their course “Linear Integrated Circuits and Applications”. Initially they are designing the circuits like “Filters”, “Voltage Regulators” and “Phase Locked Loops” using Op-Amps and are simulating them using TINA tool. Then, they are verifying their design on the Analog Starter Kits.
The vast resources available from the TI website and the lab manual of the ASKs are extremely useful not only for the students but also for the faculty who are involved in it.
Students' Projects Carried Out
The students are carrying out some projects in TI DSP lab at our institution. The Post graduate students are also doing projects in this lab along with the under graduate students. The lab is equipped with TI DSP Starter Kits which include heterogeneous and medical imaging platforms, RFID Evaluation Kits, Bluetooth Transceivers, MSP430F microcontroller boards and also Launch Pads. So, there is a large scope of areas for the students to take up their projects.
The projects that are taken up in the lab are listed below:
- Artificial Hand Gripper using Bluetooth Technology
- RFID Based Door Opening and Closing System
- Voice Activated Dental Chair
- Speech Compression and Water Marking of speech using Heterogeneous Platforms
- Implementation of Super Resolution Algorithms for Medical Imaging
Among the five projects listed above, the first three projects are the UG projects and are submitted for TI India Analog Design Contest 2011 and the remaining two projects are the projects taken up by the Post Graduate students.
As a part of the contest the students made maximum utilization of TI support, documentation material and the forums to solve their issues. This exposure really made the students to learn more than what they learn from their text books.
The two PG projects were completed and the students are learning to work with medical imaging and heterogeneous platforms.
The listed UG projects are submitted for TI India Analog Design Contest 2013
- Intelligent home security system
- Pattern identification & calculation training system for students with autism(PICTS)
- System for monitoring drowsiness using eye movement
As a part of the contest the students were received approximately $200 cost of equipment. The students made maximum utilization of TI support, documentation material and the forums to solve their issues. This exposure really made the students to learn more than what they are learning from their text books.
The first two batches were selected for a consolation prize of Rs. 10,000/- and they presented a paper in TIIEC -2013. The third batch was selected for a poster presentation in TIIEC – 2013.
Training Programs
As a part of providing awareness to the students to use the TI DSP and ASKs, two workshops are organized in the institution in the month of October, 2011 and in the month of January 2012 for the benefit of second and third year UG students. The titles of the projects are listed below:
- A One – day Workshop on DSP Processors and their Applications
- A Two – day workshop on Analog Electronics Application Tools
A One Day Training Program on DSP Processors and their Applications
A one day training program on DSP Processors was conducted by Mr. M. V. Ganeswara Rao, Associate Professor, Department of ECE, SVECW, for the benefit of third year ECE students on 8th January, 2012. Sixty students participated in the program. The total program is divided into two parts. In the first part, a theory on the evolution and different families of DSP processors were discussed. Besides, the architecture of TMS320C6713 DSK was discussed in detail. Later, a demonstration of noise removal in speech signals using Adaptive Log Mean Square Filters using TMS320C6713 was made.
A Two Day workshop on Analog Electronics Application Tools
A two day workshop on Analog Electronics Application Tools was conducted by Mrs. K. Padma Vasavi, Associate Professor, Department of ECE, SVECW for the benefit of second and Third year ECE students from 5th to 6th December,2011. The morning sessions of the program are dedicated to theory regarding the design of analog electronic circuits. In the afternoon sessions, the students are made familiar to various Analog Electronics application tools like TINA for circuit simulation, Filterpro for designing active filters and ADCPro for analyzing A to D converters with the help of the huge documentation available in the website. The students are given the problems given in the TI India Analog Design Contest 2011 as Challengers on the first day of the program and are asked to submit them by the next day. The students showed a lot of enthusiasm in solving the problems and some of the students came up with effective solutions.
Real Time Implementation of Audio and Video Processing on Texas Instruments Development Tools
The workshop was commenced on 10th September,2012. Participants who came to attend the workshop registered themselves from 9 AM to 10 AM. The inaugural function started at 10 Am. The dignitaries presented on the occasion are : Dr. G. Srinivasa Rao, Principal SVECW, Dr. S. Srinivasa Kumar, Director, Sponsored Research JNTU Kakinada, Mr. Azaharuddin Pyati, Application Engineer from Cranes Software International Ltd, Bangalore, Mr. S. Hanumantha Rao, HOD Incharge, ECE department and the Convener of the workshop, and also Dr. K. Pushpa Co-coordinator of the workshop.
The inaugural session was followed by the key note address by Dr. S. Srinivasa kumar. The title of his address is “Research Methodologies and Recent Trends in Digital Image Processing. Initially, Dr. Srinivasa Kumar explained the participants about the different steps involved in doing a research work. He gave several important guidelines for the participants right from choosing a suitable guide to making a thesis without plagiarism. He then explained the different image processing techniques in the literature and possible problems that can be solved to get a good research work. He gave a scrupulous description about each image processing technique and the thrust areas in them and the means and methods available to solve them and the performance metrics for the performance evaluation.
The afternoon sessions started with the presentation by Mr. Azaharuddin Pyati of Cranes Software International Ltd, Bangalore. His first presentation was on the “Introduction to DSP Processors and its Families”. In his second session, he explained about the “Architecture of TMS320C 6000 Family DSP Processors”. In his third session Mr. Azaharuddin showed demonstrations of some non real time programs like “Generation of Sine Wave” and “linear Convolution” using Code Composer Studio.
The second day of the workshop started at 9 am sharp. In the first session Mr. Azaharuddin demonstrated the audio and video loop back on the DSP Starter kits. In the second session of the morning the participants were given Hands on the DSP starter kits. They did several real time and non real time implementation of DSP algorithms till the lunch break. After the lunch break, the resource person, Mr. Azaharuddin gave demonstration on Image daughter card and demonstrations on the heterogeneous platform.
The valedictory function started at 4.30 pm in the evening. The dignitaries present on the occasion are D.G. Srinivasa rao, principal, SVECW, Mr. S. Hanumantha Rao HODI/c, ECE Dept and Mr. Azaharuddin. Mr. Azaharuddin was felicitated by the Principal, SVECW. Later some of the participants gave their feedback on the workshop. After the certificate distribution, vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. S. Hanumantha Rao.
Embedded system using NANO Boards
A Two day training program on Embedded system using NANO Boards was conducted by Mr. T. Sreekar, Sr. Application Engineer ,Entuple Technologies, Bangaluru, for the benefit of second year ECE students during 4th -5th October, 2012. Around 32 students participated in the program.
Any Other Funding Obtained to Enhance the Lab
The TI- DSP lab initially consisted of Five TMS320C6713 DSK kits along with accessories and then it received six Analog Starter Kits from Texas Instruments, India as donation. The Lab had thirty six Personal Computers a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope and Function generator other than the boards.
Later, the Lab received a funding of Rs10 Lakhs in MODROBS from AICTE, New Delhi for modernizing the laboratory. Then, the following boards are purchased from Texas Instruments, India to enhance the lab facilities along with improving the research and development status of the lab
- TMS320C6416 Boards 2 Nos
- TMS320C6455 Boards 2 Nos
- VM3224K2 Daughter Card 1 No
- CCD Camera for Video Processing 2 Nos
- Bloom with DSP Tutor 1 No
- Heterogeneous Platform 1 No
(DM642 EVM Module+Xilinx EVM Co-Processor)
