Laboratories in education are the ideal place where students practice the concepts by doing. The cost-efficient laboratory enhances the learning of students by exploring the concepts practically using Computer-aided tools and interfacing the developed model to hardware for practically visualizing the propagation of the signal. This paper presents the general framework and study of related work done in this field by using different software tools like MATLAB/Simulink, Lab VIEW, Proteus, Pspice etc. and hardware methodologies like DSP processor, FPGA board, DSK board, Arduino kit etc. which help the student to learn and apply the concepts more effectively in the real world. © 2017 IEEE.