Hardware and software platform for ADCWAN remote laboratory M. Corrado a,⇑ , L. De Vito a,1 , H. Ramos b , J. Saliga c,2 a Dept. of Engineering, University of Sannio, Corso Garibaldi 107, 82100 Benevento, Italy b IT/DEEC, IST, Universida de Tecnica de Lisboa, Av. de Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal c Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunications, Technical University of Košice, Letná 9/A, Košice, Slovakia article info Article history: Received 4 September 2010 Received in revised form 5 December 2011 Accepted 13 December 2011 Available online 24 December 2011 Keywords: Analog to digital converters Distance learning Remote laboratory Standard harmonization abstract In this paper an innovative hardware and software platform, called ADCWAN (Analog to Digital Converters on Wide Area Network), concerning the electronic measurement field is presented. In particular, ADCWAN is a pioneering networking cooperative environment regarding Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) testing. The hardware and software architec- tures of ADCWAN are described in detail and some ADC tests using the same test setup are presented. ADCWAN is distributed on a wide geographic area providing theoretical and practical tools to characterize ADCs. In particular, ADCWAN is a new approach to promote the harmonization of standards existing for ADCs, it establishes a collaborative work envi- ronment supporting the scientific research community to improve the harmonization level, allowing the scientific training of young researchers, the dissemination and the comparison of metrological information. In the paper the goals and benefits of ADCWAN toward research community are summarized. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The concept of remote access to laboratory equipment arises naturally from telemetry and the well-established trend of using computers, usually PCs, to control and re- cord data from local laboratory apparatus. As scientific re- search by using instrumentation and experimentation has become more expensive and remote education has become more common, Internet-accessible laboratories no longer appear novel [1,2]. Remote laboratories (RLs) used for the distance learning on instrumentation and measurement have been focus of increasing attention in recent years. The main applications of RLs refer to the industrial and educational fields. In the industrial field they are suitable if the environment to be controlled is not accessible to hu- man operators or if it is spread over a wide area [3]. In the educational field, RLs allow expanding the possibilities of traditional laboratories. In fact, traditional laboratories suf- fer of expensive equipment, the necessity to repeat the same experiment many times, and the insufficient number of qualified teaching personnel [4]. Instead, RLs allow shar- ing equipments among different departments or universi- ties [5] and provide to the students an access to the experiments not limited to the course time schedule [3]. Nowadays, a lot of remote experiments, lessons and seminars are available on the Web [6–8]. On the other hand, RLs, able to interactively manage remotely con- trolled experiments, have diffused more slowly than the common e-learning courses. However, in last years, new technologies have been introduced which foster the crea- tion of interactive RLs [9,10]. Projects for sharing real laboratories on the Internet have been realized and validated in different contexts. As an example, in the field of biochemistry, access to an elec- tron microscope, provided to remote users, offers them control over the only instrument features that they need to undertake their tasks. Therefore, damages to equipment are avoided and the user safety is assured [11]. Most of these efforts, however, have been realized for ad hoc systems that are closely tailored to the educational 0263-2241/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.measurement.2011.12.003 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0824 305817; fax: +39 0824 305840. E-mail addresses: marco.corrado2@hotmail.it (M. Corrado), devito@ unisannio.it (L. De Vito), hgramos@lx.it.pt (H. Ramos), Jan.Saliga@tuke.sk (J. Saliga). 1 Tel.: +39 0824 305817; fax: +39 0824 305840. 2 Tel.: +421 55 6022857. Measurement 45 (2012) 795–807 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Measurement journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement