Laboratory For Real Time And Embedded Systems

This article discusses the design and implementation of laboratory equipment suitable for teaching and research in the area of embedded and real-time systems. Basic characteristics of real-time systems are that they are embedded and inherently concurrent. Being embedded implies that interfaces of software modules are to be well defined, whereas, concurrency indicates that software processes execute logically in parallel. Using a uniprocessor computer, software processes execute in an overlapped fashion and ordering of events and communication among the processes is not always what was expected. To bridge the gap between the theory and the practice, a laboratory was built which supports the study of embedded and real-time issues that appear simple on the surface, but are in reality “wicked” problems. The real-time laboratory equipments is designed and assembled around several commercially available components. Its main software/hardware components are personal computer workstations hosting Tornado integrated tool for development of real-time and embedded software, single board computers hosting VxWorks real-time operating system, and a toy-size hardware railroad. The described laboratory equipment enables the user to have an ample opportunity to gain an indepth understanding of the underlying mechanisms that govern the behavior of embedded and concurrent processes, to compare software execution in simulated and in real, i.e. native, environment, and to visually observe and verify software behavior on the real-time controlled demonstration target – the railroad model.