International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education

An inexpensive tester of PC expansion cards, providing safe hardware emulation of the PC, is described. The tester accommodates a variety of different applications by reprogramming an internal Altera EPLD to generate the test sequence required for each undergraduate or M.Sc. project.

This paper describes a LAN-based system for load flow simulation studies. The system comprises an automatic one-line generator, a graphical user interface (GUI), print and database supporting tools. One-line displays can be generated either manually or automatically. The GUI was designed using the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm.

An adaptation of the circle criterion to pulse-width-modulation type nonlinearities in a digital control loop is presented. Formulae are derived for both gain and the mode of oscillations of the system response. Standard examples are taken, including that of a plant with a pole at the origin.

This article describes a method whereby most linear time – invariant SISO control systems dominated by no more than three time constants can be designed by a simple procedure, refined if necessary by empirical formulae. In many cases specifying the initial peak time of a classical third order step response is sufficient.

The ‘ε method’ of Routh-Hurwitz criterion is examined. When roots occur on the imaginary axis it is found necessary to take the limit as c goes to zero, after each row is completed, to check for the occurrence of a row of zeros.

This paper discusses key aspects of software engineering methods and associated CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools in the undergraduate curriculum. The context is that of first degree courses in Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering, with particular reference to real-time embedded systems.