2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Wireless Environmental Sensing Electronics Framework Development with Successive Capstone Projects

Presented at Integrating Hands-On Technology and Project-Based Learning in Engineering Education

a. Plan of submission

In the full paper we will describe the evolution of our wireless system framework over three annual capstone cycles. This will include electrical components and capabilities, how those attributes have changed over the three years of project sponsorship, and where we see them going in the future. We will discuss the successes and failures of successive generations of documentation and recurring snags in getting started. We will also describe overall research successes including a discussion of resultant publications and how this ongoing program has encouraged students to pursue research in electrical engineering.

b. Assessment methods

We will discuss team self-evaluations from CATME surveys, research results, documentation and residual code generated, and research careers resulting from this project series.

c. Statement of results

Over the last three years, the author's lab has sponsored one capstone project annually in the area of wireless environmental sensing. These projects were each unique but have leveraged design reuse, documentation, and code repositories to create an evolving wireless sensor node project framework. This framework continues to develop and can be used to facilitate new research collaboration projects, involve undergraduates in research, and generate new publications. In contrast to typical industry-sponsored projects, the annual research lab-sponsored projects themselves have resulted in two publications and attracting at least three students to graduate school.

d. Topic

Capstone/senior design and project-based curriculum

Authors

Prof. David Burnett Portland State University [biography]

David C. Burnett received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington focusing on circuits, embedded systems, and oceanographic instrumentation. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California Berkeley as an NDSEG Fellow focusing on crystal-free fully-integrated wireless sensor nodes. He is currently an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Portland State University. Prior to his Ph.D., he was Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, Visiting Lecturer at Da Nang University of Technology, Vietnam, and Electrical Engineer for an experimental ROV at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. He has served on various ACM SIGGRAPH conference committees serving as emerging technology juror and responsible for special technical projects and data networks. His research interests include crystal-free RF communication, low-power circuit design, and field-deployable sensor systems. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

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