Simulation Assisted Teaching to Enhance Student's Learning

Simulation is one of the most advanced, vast and fast growing area in the field of science and technology. It has special importance in teaching and learning. Peoples are using these technologies in their fields innovatively. The use of a circuit simulator is more and more necessary in teaching electrical and electronics engineering. This technique makes it possible to obtain results when the hardware is unavailable or very costly. Simulations are widely used in the industry hence it is necessary to introduce our students to this technique. Now a day's simulations are used in nearly every engineering, scientific, and technological discipline. Simulation is the process of designing a model of a real or imagined system and conducting experiments with that model. The purpose of simulation is to study and understand the behavior of the system. Simulation allows the analysis of a system's capabilities, capacities, and behaviors without requiring the construction of experimentation with the real system. Authors tried to simulate an important concept about “Squaring a Signal”. Initially squaring of dc signal is described and then study is extended to ac signal. TINA software is used for this study. TINA Design Suite is a powerful circuit simulation and PCB design software widely used for analyzing and designing of analog, digital, VHDL, MCU, and mixed electronic circuits and their PCB layouts. One can also analyze SMPS, RF, communication, and optoelectronic circuits etc.

Squaring a dc voltage is rather simple to simulate but some interesting results are obtained by squaring an ac voltage. Such interesting concept triggers imagination power of students and broaden their understanding level. Many more things can be simulated and put forth of students to enhance their capabilities in the field of higher education.