An intra-disciplinary capstone project in digital filter design

An intra-disciplinary capstone project combined students from a mathematically-based DSP course with students from an HDL/FPGA synthesis course. These teams designed and implemented digital filters for removing noise from ECG signals. An extensive student exit survey indicated that the students believed that they learned more and also derived more enjoyment from this project due to the nature of the design teams and due to the open-ended real-world application. In summary, students gained more realistic experience in working on design teams comprised of systems and hardware engineers.