Students from the USA participate in remote classes at LINTE ^ 2 Lab | Gdańsk University of Technology

Special didactic classes, conducted on November 17 and 19, were held as part of the ‘Software Project in Computer Networks in the Software Engineering’ course. It is conducted at an American university by prof. Janusz Zalewski, who has been cooperating with the Faculty of Electrical and Control Engineering for several years.

The main point of the course was the presentation of a remote experiment, conducted in real time, which consisted in controlling the operation of the physical model of the distribution network. Students from the USA had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the phenomenon of voltage drops in power networks, as well as with the operation of the actual SCADA system installed in the LINTE ^ 2 Laboratory.

During the experiment, the following aspects of the SCADA system functioning were presented:

•     real-time acquisition of process data from supervised devices
•     control of supervised devices using a graphical user interface
•     storing process data in a database for analytical and monitoring purposes
•     use of a human-machine interface (HMI) in a multi-user network environment.

As part of the experiment, Tyler Martin - a student of the American university, presented the possibility of performing remote controls from his computer connected to the internal LINTE ^ 2 network via a VPN link.

Moreover, during the course the network protocols used in the LINTE ^ 2 installation were discussed, such as: IEC 61850, Modbus / TCP and Simulink Real-Time UDP, which allowed students to learn about the specificity of network communication in multi-protocol industrial computer networks.

The classes, which were met with the lively interest of American students and with a very high assessment of the lecturer, were prepared and conducted using the LINTE ^ 2 Laboratory infrastructure by a team of Faculty employees composed of: PhD, Eng. Andrzej Augusiak, PhD, DSc, Eng. Robert Małkowski and PhD, Eng. Alicja Stoltmann. The experiment was prepared and conducted by students Mateusz Breza and Filip Grabowski, who were also administrators of the LINTE ^ 2 research installation.