COSC 4931/5931 Embedded Systems

This course will be part lecture and part senior seminar. The focus of the lecture material will be on systems, languages and tools related to embedded systems. The seminar portion of the course will focus on current research publications in the area. Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

Read, understand, and present current research papers in the area of embedded systems.

Design, implement, and test their own embedded system components for integration into a larger system.

Document complexities of hardware/software interaction in their embedded system components in sufficient detail that the work can be understood and replicated by others.

Student grades will be assigned based on evaluation of the following:

(20%) Presentation and discussion of current, relevant research papers drawn from the top publication venues in the field;

(30%) Quality of embedded system components produced and successfully integrated into the existing MSCS Experimental Operating Systems Lab infrastructure;

(10%) Completeness of final written report detailing both the technical aspects of the constructed components and the lessons learned throughout the construction process.

(40%) Midterm and Final Exams (20% each) on the textbook content.

Projects will vary according to student interest and available resources. Some sample projects could include:

Wireless network interface driver for embedded Mips WRT54GL platform. Will allow XINU operating system to interact over wireless network with other servers or backend machines.

Remote target debugging hardware and software support for the Embedded XINU operating system over EJTAG hardware on the MIPS platform.

New device drivers for the WRT160NL (USB, GPIO, wireless, network switch, etc.) or the Virtual Qemu platform (NE2000 NIC, IDE disk interface, frame buffer device, etc.,) the next generation of Embedded XINU backend.

Real-time scheduling enhancements and lightweight synchronization primitives for Embedded XINU. Will enhance the suitability of our platform for research and courses on real-time systems.

Porting Embedded Xinu to a new embedded platform (Playstation 3, ARM, AVR, etc.)

Novel hardware peripheral integration (motors, actuators, sensors, sound equipment) for platforms in the Systems Lab, including MIPS, 68HC12, Z86, and ARM devices.

Note: Projects do not have to center on Xinu, but that is the area where we are best-equipped to provide in-depth support.