Abstract

Low power dissipation is a current topic in digital design, and therefore, it should be covered in a state-of-the-art electrical engineering curriculum. This paper describes how low-power design can be addressed within a digital design course. Doing so would be beneficial for both topics because low-power design is not detached from the systems perspective, and the digital design course would be enriched by references to current challenges and applications. Thus, the presented course should serve as an example of how a course can be developed to also teach students about sustainable engineering.

Highlights

  • Lecturers constantly have to review whether the courses they teach cover the relevant content in a changing world

  • This paper describes an approach by which low-power electronics can be addressed within a digital design course instead of being offered as a supplementary subject, as criticized by [5], or as a special focus course [6]

  • It can be observed that subject area 5, low power design is covered as a special topic [6,11], in combination with area 4, microelectronics [15], with area 3, digital systems [10], or both areas [9]

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Lecturers constantly have to review whether the courses they teach cover the relevant content in a changing world. The study programs of mechanical and electrical engineering are currently revised to consider sustainable development. This initiative is called the "Blue Track", where blue stands for efficiency and responsible use of resources [1]. Students are aware of the need for sustainability and energy conservation, and they will expect the issue of power dissipation to be addressed in their courses [2,3,4]. An advantage of integrating this topic into the course is that it should foster greater interest amongst the students for both aspects, in that energy efficiency will not be presented as a separate subject and digital design will be supplemented with state-of-the-art references and applications

Review of digital design textbooks
Eductional Setting
Educational Objectives
Physical Causes of Power Consumption
Influencing Factors to Power Consumption
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Hands-on Lab with FPGAs
Experimental Setup
Design Experiments
Power Consumption of Design Experiments
Observability of Further Parameters
DEVELOPMENT BOARD FOR LAB EXERCISES
Findings
CONCLUSION
Full Text
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