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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 39. NO. 2 , MAY 1996

subsystem to function properly within the system and in writing project reports that will eventually be combined into their final report. Even the students whose robots were unsuccessful at the task said that they had leamed much from the course and commented that if they just had another week, their robot would have been successful. Therefore, the most important change that we may try with this course is to offer it to students over two class quarterdsemesters. Students rated this course very well on the student course evaluation forms. Eighty-two percent of the students rated the course as very good or one of the best courses that I have had. Only one student did not care for the course. All of the students felt that they have leamed at least as much in this course as they had in their 24%-more than other courses, and other courses ( 12%-average, 50%-an exceptional amount more than other courses). When the students were asked if the course content was important, 69% of the students felt that the material was very important, 25% felt that it was important, and 6% (one student) had mixed feelings. The main drawback of the course is that it requires a significant amount of time during a period when the student is interviewing and trying to complete a number of other technical electives. Twelve percent of the students claimed that there was an average amount of work in this course, 19% claim that the workload was heavy, and 56% felt that the work required for this course was the heaviest of all of their courses. The work load problem could be eliminated if a class were held on a semester basis, or held over the duration of quarters. REFERENCES
R. D. Klafter, T. A. Chmielewski, and M. Megin, Rnhntic Engineering: An Integrated Approach. Prentice Hall, 1989. J. L. Jonra and A. M. Flynn, Mobile Rohors: Inspiration to Implementation. Wellesley, MA: A. K. Peters, 1993. P. Horowitz and W. Hill, The Art ofElectronic.s. Cambridge University, 1980.

CK2 (1.5 MHz)

CKI (1 MHz)

-+

I I I 8-bit Shift Register

8.2K

-Circuit
output

Fig. 1 .

Noise generator.

A Simple Low-Cost Laboratory Hardware for Noise Generation

Francisco DAlvano and Renny E. Badra

the existing schemes. This work presents a simple and inexpensive hardware conceived and implemented at Universidad Simdn Boldvar (USB Caracas, Venezuela) for random noise generation designed for student use. Although the spectral and statistical features of the signal obtained differ slightly from those usually desired (i.e., spectral flatness and Gaussianity), this signal is shown to be quite suitable for experimental simulation of noisy environments in digital and analog communication systems within a reasonable degree of likeness to reality. This circuit hardware consists of two independent digital oscillators, an eight-tap shift-register, two XOR gates, an opamp-based active filter, and a resistive network. Digital chips may be either CMOS or TTL. Circuit power can be drawn from a dual-voltage power source or from a single-voltage one ( 5 volts or more). If the circuit is to be mounted on a prototyping board, i t can be designed to produce low-pass noise signals with a reasonably flat frequency spectrum up to 200 kHz or more. A band-pass noise signal can also be obtained by slightly changing the basic configuration of the circuit.

11. CIRCUIT DESCRIPTION

Abstract-A circuit hardware for custom noise generation is presented, described, and explained. Its very low circuit complexity, along with the spectral and statistical features of the noise signal obtained, make it specially suitable for student use in laboratory sessions related to digital and analog communications systems.

I. INTRODUCTION

Artificial noise generation for laboratory use has been addressed by commercial equipment manufacturers [4]. Nevertheless, existing commercial equipment tends to be too expensive for massive laboratory use. On the other hand, custom implementation of random signal generators has been avoided due to the circuit complexity of
Manuscript received March 3 , 1994. The authors are with the Departainento de Electronica y Circuitos, Universidad S i m h Bolivar, Apartado 89000. Caracah I086A, Venezuela. Publisher Item Identilier S 00 I8-9359(96)04408-I .

The circuit proposed, as many other noise generators, is based on a pseudo noise (PN) sequence generator [ I ] , as shown in Fig. I . The eight-tap shift-register and its logic feedback (through XOR A only, XOR B should be ignored for the time being) configure a pseudorandom sequence generator with a cycle length of 255. To achieve this maximum sequence length, inputs of XOR A must be outputs number 8 and 5 (or 3) of the shift-register. The periodicity in the sequence obtained is clearly an undesirable feature (since sequence length is only 255). To eliminate it, an additional XOR gale (XOR B) is included in the feedback path. This XOR gate is fed with a clock signal (CK2) which is generated independently from the shift-register main clock (CKI). Also, both timing signals have different nominal frequency values. The effect of this second XOR gate is to break the pseudo random pattern each time CK2 is high during a shift operation, which is ordered independently by CK 1. This will cause the sequence to be, if not

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 39, NO. 2 , MAY 1996

completely nonperiodic, at least periodic with an extremely long period. To obtain an analog voltage from this eight-digit binary sequence, the shift-register outputs are linearly combined through a resistive network, which also plays the role of the coefficient set of a discretetime FIR filter [2]. In the specific implementation displayed in Fig. 1, these weights provide a low-pass transfer function with a raisedcosine impulse response. Despite this resistive network, only a finite set of voltage levels is obtained at its output. Additional low-pass filtering eliminates abrupt pulse transitions and finally delivers an analog low-pass noise signal, which can be used to contaminate baseband analog messages as well as digital ones. In the version displayed in Fig. 1, a single-pole active RC filter was selected, although a higher pole number will provide a better frequency shape, if needed. Output level can be adjusted through the 1 KR trimmer. The shift-register should provide polar voltage swing. Thus, CMOS technology is recommended, although positive voltage range (TTL compatible) can also be used along with a DC-block capacitor. 111. THE NOISE SIGNAL It seems reasonable to expect that the noise signal obtained will show a low-pass spectral characteristic, given the nature of the frequency response of both the discrete-time and continuous-time filters included in the signal path (a band-pass spectral shape can also be obtained, as shown in the Appendix). On the other hand, the probability density function (pdf) of the noise signal can be approximately predicted, given the random nature of the binary sequence generated at each of the shift-register parallel outputs. Although time-related, these eight random binary variables, which are added to form the noise signal, are statistically independent from one another, and the central limit theorem [3] holds. Thus, a Gaussian-like pdf is expected to be obtained. Although it is desirable to extend the frequency range up to its maximum, this would require reducing or canceling the contributions of some of the shift-register taps (by increasing their respective resistance values, or eventually eliminating them), which would deviate the noise from being Gaussian-like and would tend to produce undesirable peaks in its pdf. This trade-off situation can be solved by using all of the shift-register outputs, along with convenient scaling of the frequency domain (achieved through the adjustment of the frequency of the main oscillator CK1). An implementation of this generator was simulated in a computer in order to perform the spectral and statistical analysis. The weighting resistances were set to produce a raised-cosine impulse response, which provides a low-pass transfer function. Main oscillator (CK1) was set to 1 MHz, while CK2 was set to 1.5 MHz (to emulate tolerances of the real circuit, simulation values included some inaccuracy in these frequency settings, as well as in the resistance values). The low-pass filter (one pole) cut-off frequency was set to 200 kHz. Fig. 2 shows the histogram of a 1.6 mS segment of the noise signal obtained, while Fig. 3 displays its power spectrum, estimated by averaging eight 4096-points periodograms. Both results seem to confirm the arguments presented above. As a part of the Digital Communications Laboratory experiences, the circuit (low-pass version) has been widely used by electronic engineering students at USB, Results have been quite satisfactory. IV. CONCLUSION A low-cost, simple, and efficient hardware for laboratory noise generation has been presented and described. The features of the noise signal were discussed; simulation results confirmed that noise

-Vmax

Vmax

Fig. 2. Histogram from a sample noise sequence (simulation).

-50dB
-100 dB -150 dB 0 f

200kHz

6OOkHz

Fig. 3. Noise power spectrum (simulation).

obtained through this circuit has a Gaussian-like probability density function and a low-pass spectral shape, which can be arbitrarily scaled. A band-pass version was also introduced. The study of the circuit constitutes by itself an interesting application of the time and frequency domain signal analysis and digital signal processing. A11 these features strongly suggest that the circuit introduced can be useful for student use in some laboratory experiences related to digital and analog communications.

APPENDIX: THE BAND-PASS VERSION

A band-pass version of the circuit presented can be easily implemented by inverting the logic outputs of registers 2, 4, 6, and 8 (or 1, 3, 5 , and 7), using additional NOT gating. This will make the impulse response of the discrete time filter a band-pass one, centered at half the frequency of CKl . First-null bandwidth of this noise signal is also half of CK1. The analog filter must also be changed to band-pass, using the same center frequency. By adjusting the 3-dB bandwidth of the latter, noise spectrum can be made more frequency selective. The band-pass version described here has only been tested through computer simulation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Prof. T. Adrian de PCrez, head of the BID-CONICIT Project E-18 (Digital Signal Processing Applied to ISDN) USB, for facilitating the equipment used in the elaboration of this paper.

REFERENCES
S. Haykin, Digital Communications. New York: Wiley, 1988. A. Oppenheim and R. Schaffer, Digital Signal Processing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974. A. B. Carlson, Communication Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Operating und Service Manual. H P 3722A Noise Generator. Scotland, U.K.: Hewlett Packard, 1971.