THE INF'INITY PROJECT: DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING AND DIGITAL MUSIC IN

HIGH SCHOOL ENGINEERINGEDUCATION

Scott C. Douglas

Department of Electrical Engineering

Southern Methodist University
P.O. Box 750338, Dallas, Texas 75275
[email protected]

ABSTRACT economy continues to grow, the number of college graduates

in engineering and related technology disciplines continues
The importance of mathematics and science education in to fall. A well-designed, exciting, and relevant engineering
modem technological society cannot be understated. This curriculum at the pre-college level is likely to increase the
keynote paper outlines the structure and goals of The numbers of students who enroll in college engineering and
I"TY Project, a joint effort between educators, technology programs.
administrators, and industry leaders to establish an This paper outlines the structure and goals of The
engineering curriculum at the high school level. The INFINITY Project, a joint effort between university educators,
curriculum motivates students to learn about the high school teachers and administrators, and industrial
fundamental concepts and principles of mathematics, leaders to establish a viable engineering curriculum that i s
science, and engineering through the study of multimedia taught within the regular high school day. The curriculum
and information technology. Digital music and audio teaches students about the design of technology-driven
synthesis are used at the onset of this curriculum to teach systems and motivates them to learn fundamental concepts
students about signals, systems, and modeling. Several of mathematics, science, and engineering. Digital music and
examples ftom this portion of the curriculum are described, audio synthesis are used at the onset of this curriculum t o
including a real-time interactive waveform synthesizer, a teach students about signals, systems, and modeling. This
real-time guitar synthesizer based on physical modeling, a paper delves into the details of this portion of the curriculum
real-time sinusoidal MIDI player, and an extremely low-cost and describes the concepts and ideas illustrated in these
loudspeaker that each student designs, builds, and tests. lessons. Several educational examples of this portion of the
curriculum are described, including
1. INTRODUCTION a real-time interactive waveform synthesizer,
a real-time guitar synthesizer based on physical
We live in a technology-driven society. The capabilities of modeling,
computational devices have grown at an exponential rate a real-time sinusoidal MIDI player, and
over the past four decades, to the point where information an extremely low-cost loudspeaker that each
processing by electronic devices is central to almost every student designs, builds, and tests.
aspect of modem society. These gains are largely due to the
activities of engineers, mathematicians, and scientists who
continue to explore new way to design, build, and test 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE INFINITY PROJECT
computational systems. According to Moore's Law, these
gains are likely to continue at their current rates for the near The INFINITY Project consists of five key elements:
future.
Who benefits most from such technological change? A textbook with example problems that contains
Clearly, those who study an engineering or technology the core content of the course;
discipline after high school will benefit throughout their A set of laboratory exercises that are integrated with
lives ftom these advances because of their knowledgeable the textbook content and that are performed by the
positions. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that students in a computer laboratory setting;
everyone in modem society requires a basic understanding A low-cost softwarehardware laboratory kit that
of technology and how it is created. To reach the widest each student uses to perform their experiments and
possible audience, this education must occur at the primary gain immediate feedback;
and/or secondary school levels. Current engineering and Summer training institutes for high school
technology education at the pre-college ' levels is mainly mathematics and science teachers to learn how to
focused on familiarity training with common technological teach the curriculum; and
devices, e.g. word processing with computers. What is needed A web-based portal that allows teachers to interact
is a broader focus on the design principles behind with the curriculum designers during the school
technology in a structured curriculum. Such a curriculum can year and address any day-to-day and week-to-week
also address another important issue facing our economy: concerns about their particular course.
While the number of jobs in the technology sector of the

21-24 October 2001, New Paltz, New York 1

During the 2000-2001 pilot school year, fourteen schools detailed parameters of the curriculum were specified,
from the Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, lX, areas taught including the level of mathematics and science to be taught,
the INFTNITY Project curriculum to approximately 500 total the technology for and scope of the laboratory component of
students. In the 2001-2002 school year, 40 schools from 10 the curriculum, and the topics to be coven:d. During a second
different states are teaching a re-designed version of the follow-up meeting in January 2001, the initial impact of the
curriculum to approximately 1500 total students. In curriculum was assessed, and a complete re-design of the text
addition, the Texas Education Association has given was fashioned to better meet all students’ needs.
statewide approval to the curriculum, such that any Texas
high school can offer one mathematics credit or one science
2.2. The Laboratory Exercises
credit to any student taking the course. We intend to grow
this program to approximately 1000 schools and 50000 Integrated within the course textbook are laboratory
students across the US.by 2005-2006. The growth in the exercises that illustrate and apply important engineering
program does not appear to be limited by interest; rather, it i s design principles. These laboratories are in the form of (1) an
driven mainly by the growth of the number of qualified HTh4L. webpage that describes the task(s) to be completed,
summer training personnel, the majority of whom shall be and (2) a software worksheet that contains a functional block
drawn from the ranks of high school teachers that have diagram of the system to be designed and tested or the
taught the course. blocks needed to build such a design from scratch.
A brief description of each component is now provided. The software environment used for the worksheet i s
Visual Applications Builder (VAS)by Hyperception, Inc.
2.1. The Textbook VAT3 is a scaled-down version of Hyperception’s core DSP
design software that high-technology companies use t o
The textbook for the course, entitled Multimedia and prototype real-time signal processing systems. It is a flexible
Information Engineering [l], focuses on the design and design environment involving only icons as software
implementation of information-based technology. While any modules, and students need not learn programming to run
one of a number of core topics could be chosen for a high existing worksheets nor to build new ones. The programming
school engineering course, we have focused on multimedia methodology involves simple rules regarding signal flow
and information technology as the core subject areas for graphs that the students quickly master. All of these
three main reasons: laboratory exercises are available at no cost through The
1) Everyone is likely to benefit from having general DEINITY Project web portal for participating high schools
knowledge of these areas in later life, no matter and run on the I ” Technology Kit, to be described
what their profession might be. next.
2 ) Engineering design principles for these devices can Examples of laboratory worksheets that the students
be taught without the need for senior- or college- design and build, ignoring music-related ones, include:
level calculus. a visual object tracker that tracks moving objects in
3) Most students are familiar with and enjoy one or a video stream;
more aspects of these areas, whether they listen to a coin counter that counts the number of a certain
music, go to the movie theater, or communicate type of coin in a f i e d or moving image;
using cellular telephones or the Internet.
The textbook has been written with a “top-down’’ focus on a color imagehide0 display with adjustable
particular problems in the following areas: quantizer resolution; and
an audio transmitter and receiver that communicates
Technology projections
text messages across the room in real-time.
Digital music, audio synthesis, and sound effects
Digital image analysis and manipulation
Communication systems and networks 2.3. In-Class Laboratory Technology
Information storage, encryption, and error
correction
Hardware implementations of systems
Each chapter contains problems to be solved by hand and
calculator as well as “just-in-time” in-text pointers t o
relevant laboratory exercises, to be described shortly. The
textbook has also been designed for flexibility: the first 8
chapters represent core material that covers essential topics,
whereas the remaining 10 chapters provide enrichment
material to the core chapters’ content. The mathematical
prerequisites for the course are Algebra II,and no calculus i s
used or needed.
This 700-page textbook is the result of a two-year
design process. In January 2000, a meeting was held between
the textbook authors, twenty high school teachers from
across Texas, and members of an advisory board consisting
of university faculty, industrial partners, high school
administrators, and educational advisors. At that meeting,

2 2001 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics

The lNFMTY Technology Kit is a low-cost hardware and along with news and general information about The
software kit that students use to design, build, and test their INFINITYProject. While we currently provide 24-hour turn-
real-time signal processing designs. The Kit includes: around responses to urgent teacher questions, many of our
a Texas Instruments TMS320C31 Evaluation teachers offer answers to other teachers’ questions when they
Module ( E m ) with power supply, Can.
Hyperception’s VAB software,
a microphone with battery-powered preamplifier,
a pair of powered loudspeakers,
redlblue glasses for stereoscopic image processing
experiments, and
all necessary cables and adapters.
The Kit connects to a Windows-based PC through its parallel
port and allows for one-button-push programming and
execution of VAB worksheets on the TMS320C3 1 EVM. The
EVM is currently only utilized for real-time audio
experiments; video experiments are PC-based and employ
files and video cameia streams as inputs. Real-time data
transfers from the EVM to and from the PC are used within
the VAI3 worksheets to enable students to interact with the
DSP-based programs while they are running and to analyze
the system’s inputs and outputs.

2.4. Summer Training Institutes Fig rtes.

Currently, there are very few high school teachers in the U.S.
who are trained as engineers, and no state has established
3. DIGITAL MUSIC AND AUDIO SYNTHESIS
high school teacher certification procedures in engineering.
To meet the teaching needs of the I”lY curriculum, we In the initial design of the I “ Project curriculum, we
have developed a 40-hour, five-day summer training as authors recognized the importance of music to motivate
institute. This institute provides each high school teacher the understanding of fundamental concepts in one-
with a brief but intense exposure to the curriculum, training dimensional signals and their manipulation. Almost
on the use of VAB and laboratory worksheets, and extended everybody listens to music. Music also provides direct links
time for developing and exploring individual VAB designs. to important concepts in mathematics and science. Some of
No attempt is made to “teach the entire book” to the teachers; these concepts include period, frequency, amplitude, spectra,
rather, emphasis is placed on the engineering design process wavelength, time delay, the decibel scale, sinusoidal signals,
and the way engineering differs from the core mathematics or and exponential decay. Our goal was to uncover these
scientific discipline of each teacher. For the past two concepts through a top-down design problem involving a
summers, all institutes-six in total-were held on the relevant task to the students. The result of this effort became
campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX One Chapters 2 and 3 of the course text, which represent
institute was actually run by two high school teachers, both approximately 25% of the core material.
of whom had taught the course in the pilot year, with The task that introduces Chapter 2 and is continued with
minimal expert assistance. In the summer of 2002, these slight modification in Chapter 3 is easily appreciated:
institutes will be held in various parts of the U.S. at regional
host universities and institutions. Partnerships with several “Suppose a group of your friends have gotten a
regional universities and institutes have been forged t o band together. Everyone is bringing a different
provide local assistance with training. musical instrument to play. You want to join in on
the band, but you’re not sure which instrument you
want to play. In fact, different songs are going to
2.5. Web-Based Information Portal require different instruments, so you want to be
able to play a number of different ones. The only
All teachers dynamically adjust their teaching schedule and problem is, you don’t have any of these
methods to meet the needs of their students. To make sure instruments, and you probably don’t know how t o
our high school teachers have the resources that they need t o play all of them. How can digital technology still
be successful, we have developed a web portal for make it possible for you to be in the band’s
information delivery and discussion (wwwinfinitv- spotlight?”
proiect.org). This portal houses:
discussion groups on curricula and technology Rather than describe the procedure for addressing this design
issues; problem, which can be readily surmised from the course text,
VAB laboratories and worksheets; we will illustrate how certain important mathematical and
sample test questions with solutions; and scientific concepts are interwoven with experiments that
show their importance, validate a student’s understanding of
links to relevant web sites them, and lead to engineering designs that make useful

21-24 October 2001, New Paltz, New York 3

sound. Each description will take the student’s perspective, 3.2. Physical Modeling
although advanced terminology will be used where
appropriate. Another important engineering tool is modeling. Modeling
allows one to capture all of the relevant behavior of a system
by describing the function of each of its parts as well as how
3.1. Waveform Synthesis these parts are connected together. Through the power of
computation, we can even use models in place of the real-
One important aspect of the engineering design process is
world systems on which they are based, particularly in the
the collection of data relevant to the problem at hand. It is a
case of musical instruments. To understand how musical
relatively simple matter to plot audio waveforms as measured
instruments make sound, we need to know
by the microphone of the Technology Kit and study their
structure. When one plots the sound waveforms of several
1. what a traveling wave is,
2. what happens when a traveling wave hits a hard
different musical instruments at both coarse (several
surface, resulting in a reflection, and
seconds) and fine (several milliseconds) scales, one
3. how Zosses in the system cause the amplitudes of
discovers that they all have to a first approximation two
these waves to decay after every pass unless energy
structures to them. The coarse amplitude structure, termed
is continually added.
the envelope signal e(t), describes the overall loudness of the
We can use visual analogies to illustrate certain concepts
sound, whereas the fine structure of the sound p(t) repeats
(e.g. Why does left become right when you look in a mirror?
over and over. This periodic signal has a repeating interval
Do you expect your reflection to be brighter or darker than
T, called theperiod of the sound, that is connected with how
yourself?), or we can perform simple experiments with loose
“high” or “low” we perceive the pitch of the sound to be.
rope to see what happens in different situations. For other
Clearly, if one can represent both e(t) andp(f) to high enough
concepts, we can provide equations that describe the relevant
accuracy, then one can create an approximate version of the
behavior (e.g. sinusoidal traveling waves) without starting
overall sound using the rule
from first principles. Then, connecting these individual
w= e(t)xZm (1) concepts together, we obtain a mathematical model that
represents the physical behavior we are trying to emulate.
Multiplying the two signals makes sense because e(t) does
not change much over any one repeating interval, thereby Figure 4 shows the well-known digital waveguide model
scaling the amplitude of the sound as desired. of a guitar string with frequency-independent losses [2].
The VAB worksheet that implements this simple Notice that its parts-the buffers containing the string
waveform synthesis procedure is shown in Figure 3. Called displacements and the lossless and lossy inverter on each
SketchWave, it has two “sketchpads” where the unique e n d - c a n be justified from the previous discussion. Figure 5
portions ofp(t) and e(t) can be drawn using the mouse. Two shows the VAl3 worksheet that implements the guitar string
sliders can be used to adjust the time lengths of each model. Displacement can be drawn using a sketchpad,
sketchpad. Because all interfaces in the experiment interact whereas string length and pickup position can be chosen via
with the DSP EYM in real time, one can fine tune the sound sliders. This VAB invites a great number of exploratory
output while the worksheet is running, giving a high level of exercises. For example, how would you choose the loss
interactivity. Finally, clicking on the “Freq” button on the parameter a to make a banjo sound? What if you make a
multipurpose display on the upper right portion of the slightly greater than one? What sound do you expect to hear
worksheet, one can see a new representation of the sound if you draw a “notch” string displacement instead of a
waveform, called the spectrum, and through experiment learn triangular string displacement?
the relationship between the period T and the fundamental
Ji-equencyfo of the sound. S h g Displacment

bw? ....................................................................

output 1
a

........ + D .
Bridge i..................................................................... Nut
blltfer
Figure 4. Block diagram of a guitar string model.

Figure 3. Waveform Synthesis Using SketchWave VAB.

4 200 1 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics

 consists of a button magnet, a coil of insulated copper wire, a
paper cone, a Styrofoam salad bowl, and some glue. The total
materials cost of this design is about US$0.35 or somewhat
less than a candy bar.

Figure 5. Guitar String Model VAB.

3.3. Sinusoids as Music

Most everyone has heard the din of pre-programmed songs High school teachers are encouraged to use sound
from electronic keyboards in an electronic appliance store. pressure level measurements from a simple handheld sound
Most everyone has not given much thought as to how these meter for a given volume setting and signal content to grade
devices work. How does one store musical performances for each student's design. Depending on the amplification level,
playback at a later time? volumes of over lOOdBA SPL at the cone's center are not
Musical instruments can ''carry a tune" because unheard of, although the low-frequency performance of the
their waveforms are nearly-periodic. Melodies, however, are overall design is lacking. Even so, it is pretty amazing t o
made up of waveforms with varying fundamental frequency. hear recognizable sound from a speaker costing about a third
While a signal with fixed frequency content can be accurately of a dollar! In addition, the speakers also function quite well
displayed using the spectrum, we need a slightly different as microphones.
display for understanding music-one that adds a time
dimension to the spectral plots. We call such 2-D images
spectrograms. Sheet music is a type of spectrogram, and so
are MIDI files, because they store time-varying frequency
information in numeric form. To play music, all we need to
do is to feed this frequency information into devices that
change their fundamental kequency as the melody changes.
Sinusoidal signals are examples of simple periodic signals.
So, we can create a sinusoidal synthesizer that plays MIDI
files by simply connecting the frequency information from
the MIDI information stream to the frequency parameters of
the sinusoids and adding the resulting waveforms together.
Figure 6 shows the VAB worksheet for a sinusoidal MIDI
player. The yellowish block on the left-hand-side is not a
piano keyboard; rather, it simply receives a MIDI data stream Figure 7. The Gosney Speaker.
being played by a MIDI player within the Windows
environment and extracts its real-time frequency
information. The signal flow through this worksheet is easy 4. CONCLUSIONS
to understand, and in fact this VAB is one of the first in the
course that the students build themselves.
The "ITY Project offers high school students an
opportunity to learn about engineering design principles in
3.4. A Low-Cost Loudspeaker the context of information technology. Digital music is an
integral part of the curriculum, teaching important concepts
Loudspeakers are simple transducers, consisting of a magnet, about signals, systems, and modeling. Laboratory
a coil, a cone, an enclosure, and some adhesive. They experiments using real-time signal processing hardware and
function according to Oersted's Law, which governs the software help to illustrate important subject matter in
operation of all electromechanical systems. The materials practical settings.
needed to build a loudspeaker are not exotic; hence, they can
be built at extremely low cost. Figure 7 shows one such
design, names the Gosney speaker after its inventor, a
professor of electrical engineering at SMU. This speaker

21-24 October 2001, New Paltz, New York 5

 5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges Geoffrey C. Orsak,

director of The “ITY Project, who has been and
continues to be an inspiration to all of us. He also is
indebted to the other JlWNITY authors and in particular
Mark A. Yoder, who implemented all of the VAB
experiments; the numerous high school teachers whom have
already taught the curriculum; the industrial leadership of
Texas Instruments and Hyperception; and the financial
support of the National Science Foundation, the Dallas
Independent School District, and SMU.

6. REFERENCES

[l] Orsak,G.C., Athale, R, Douglas, S.C., Munson, D.C., Jr.,

Treichler, J.R.,Wood, S.L., and Yoder, MA., Multimedia
and Znformation Engineering, prelim. ed., Prentice Hall,
Upper Saddle River, NJ,2002.
[2] Smith, J . 0 , “Physical modeling using digital
waveguides,” Computer Music J., vol. 16, no. 4, pt. I, pp.
74-91, Winter 1992.

6 2001 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics