FPGA remote laboratory for hardware e-learning courses

Abstract

This paper describes the architecture of a hardware remote laboratory based on using field programmable gate array (FPGA) development boards for hardware of digital electronic circuits design. The introduced FPGA remote laboratory is suitable for delivering digital design courses as full e-learning courses. By using the FPGA remote laboratory the students can remotely access the FPGA lab through the Internet, either by using the Microsoft XP remote connection or through a webpage that has the facilities of configuring the FPGA chip online by sending the bit stream through the Internet to the lab PC which is connected through the internet to the lab PC which is connected through USB port to the FPGA board. The FPGA hardware remote laboratory introduced in this article is mainly consists of 20 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">th</sup> PCs, and 20 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">th</sup> FPGA kits. FPGA Spartan 3E Starter kits from Diligent has been used as a development board for configuring the FPGA Spartan 3E chip from Xilinx; each PC is connected to one FPGA kit and to the campus local area network. The students can remotely login to the lab machine and program the FPGA with their designs as well as testing their designs remotely. VHDL has been used as the design entry to Xilinx ISE Foundation.