Remote Educational Antenna Laboratory for Enhanced Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Education

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This project is constructing an Internet-accessible antenna range in an anechoic chamber that is large enough to characterize the types of antennas that are suitable for personal electronic devices in the frequency bands between 1 and 18 GHz. With this facility and readily available software packages, students can design, simulate, and test antennas. The investigators have students construct their antenna using simple techniques such as elements printed on circuit boards and cutting and assembling metal and dielectric parts with hand tools. In addition, they are making an antenna construction kit available that will allow students at other sites to build simple wire and printed antennas. This web-based facility when coupled with the implementation techniques being developed will allow students across the country to design and test antennas without duplicating this costly facility. Formative and summative assessments, using both quantitative and qualitative methods are being employed to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the remote user experience and its impact on student learning and interest in electromagnetics. The availability of the facility will be widely advertised through presentation at conferences, lab tours, targeted letters, and a workshop. They also plan to publish the results of their study in engineering education conferences proceedings and in archived journals. The laboratory is being developed in collaboration with San Diego State University, and beta tested at San Diego State, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the University of Washington.