Virtual work bench for electronic instrumentation teaching

This article describes the design and implementation of a virtual laboratory, computer-generated for the theoretical and practical teaching of electronic instrumentation. The virtual laboratory is implemented in a windows framework for which the teacher or student requires no prior knowledge to manage the program. The Virtual Instrumentation Workbench for Instrumentation allows visualization of the time and frequency effects produced in analog to digital conversion and in digital signal processing as well as visualizing the effects of 16 different teaching topics. It incorporates ten different waveforms, eight windows algorithms, five digital filters, and five discrete/fast Fourier transforms (DFT/FFT). The use of the virtual laboratory has allowed more than 500 students to understand the functioning of the new devices that are flooding the instrumentation market. Although it has been developed as an aid for electronic instrumentation teaching, it can also be used for the teaching of digital signal treatment.