National Instruments (News - Alert)/NI is a company specializing in graphical systems design platforms. NI LabVIEW (short for Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench) is powerful system design software built specifically for tasks performed by engineers and scientists. This graphical programming environment is used on campuses all over the world to deliver hands-on learning to the classroom, enhance research applications, and foster the next generation of innovators. With the intuitive nature of graphical system design, educators and researchers can design, prototype, and deploy their applications.

The University of California, San Diego flagship Master of Advanced Study (MAS) program in Wireless and Embedded Systems, a technical executive education program catering to engineering professionals, has adopted National Instrument’s platforms to provide a unique hands-on experience for participants.

The program is co-directed by Ryan Kastner and George Papen, and is believed to offer a new cross-disciplinary education paradigm.

Master of Advanced Study program chose NI Single-Board RIO embedded microcontrollers, Universal Software Radio Peripheral software defined radios, and NI LabVIEW system design software for model-based design of wireless, embedded and cyber-physical systems.

"The Wireless Embedded Systems Program engages students in state-of-the-art engineering that will lead to the development of next-generation wireless and embedded devices," Kastner, program co-director and professor of computer science and engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering said in a statement.

"The classes are project-oriented with a focus on laboratory exercises that connect models of computation and real-world systems, which NI's platforms provide through a graphical system design approach and scalability among hardware."

A broad range of topics such as FPGA-based hardware design, C programming of real-time operating systems, graphical system design for embedded systems and wireless multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communications, and model-based design for cyber-physical systems using signal processing, 3D physics simulation, and Statechart programming techniques. Hardware and software donated by Xilinx Inc. and Wind River (News - Alert) Systems, Inc. paired with the LabVIEW design environment helps participants explore embedded systems design at multiple levels of abstraction.

In related news, NI released the 8-slot NI 9154 MXI-Express RIO expansion chassis and the 4-slot NI 9146 Ethernet RIO expansion chassis.

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