Development and Evaluation of OpenLabs and the VISIR Open Electronics and Radio Signal Laboratory for Education Purpose

Abstract: Part I and II of this thesis constitute a theoretical and practical approach on how to open up a laboratory for remote access and enabling students to have access to the equipment 24/7. Part I covers a more general solution for enabling remote access to equipment; the suggested solution can be applied to all types of instruments that can be controlled from a PC based system. Part III and IV of this thesis present an encouragement to collaborate within in the field of remote engineering to utilize the recourses more efficiently. The idea is that universities around the world can share their experiments in a grid laboratory; every university contributes with a small part, but gets access to a wide range of experiments in this grid. Part V of this thesis concerns the modelling and simulation of the remote electronics laboratory with the purpose of estimating the maximum number of simultaneous users without losing the experience of working with a real instrument. The results indicate that one single remote electronics laboratory can handle up to 120 users simultaneously and with 120 users the delay for each user is approximately 2 seconds.