A Novel Laboratory Experimental Platform Using LabVIEW and Multisim Environments

The role of engineering laboratories during undergraduate studies, especially in the disciplines of electrical and computer engineering, is extremely important. Due to the spread of COVID-19, the conduction of laboratory work is becoming a challenging task. To transfer the engineering knowledge and problem solving skills, hardware equipment and components are used in the laboratories. Similarly, software simulators are also used due to the budget and space constraints. In this context, a separate simulator is required for each kind of laboratory experiment which not only increases the cost but also requires long learning time. Therefore, there is a need for a platform that can be used in both situations, i.e., real and virtual environments. A real environment implies that the experiments are performed physically inside the laboratory. On the other hand, a virtual environment advocates the use of the proposed platform remotely. Consequently, a LabVIEW and Multisim based experimental setup is proposed in this paper that is useful in various types of engineering laboratory experiments. The proposed platform allows to perform algorithmic level exploration as well as component level implementation. For algorithmic level exploration, a LabVIEW programming environment is employed while the circuit level implementation is supported with a Multisim. It has been observed that the proposed system is user friendly, requires less learning time and can be easily implemented in real and virtual environments.