Embedded System Development Process

Book excerpt: Almost each and every electronic gadget around us is an embedded system, for example: Smart phone, palmtop, digital watch, digital camera, printer, scanner, washer machine control panel, home security system, and many more. Embedded systems have revolutionized our society into a digital world due to the fact that they are microcontroller-based, compact in sizes, reliable in performance, and cheaper in cost. Book ContentsThis book will assist you to learn about embedded systems, its design and development process. Four serial phases: plan, design, integrated development (ID), design verification and validation (DV&V) are presented and discussed in this book.This book begins by introducing what the embedded system basics are. Chapter 1 present classification and aspect of embedded systems, describes embedded systems' hardware and software characteristics. Then it is continued by chapter 2 to depict a time-task span of the embedded system product development process.Chapter 3, 4, 5, and 6, each describes the four phases of the design and development process respectively, which are Plan (Chapter 3), Design (chapter 4), Integrated Development (Chapter 5), Design Verification and Validation (Chapter 6). Plan phase (Chapter 3) describes product requirement, cost analysis, development strategy, management plan, development methodology, design tools and equipment.Design phase (Chapter 4) go over each design process flows, and present descriptions on: hardware board design process, hardware PCB design process, signal integrity analysis and simulation, software design process, and FPGA design process.Integrated Development phase (Chapter 5) discuss on: mechanical and PCB preparations, parts acquisition, FPGA preparation, PCB assembly, hardware testing and debug, hardware/software integrated development, and virtual prototype.Design Verification and Validation phase (Chapter 6) present appearance inspection, functional testing, characteristics and measurements, performance testing, and ESD, EMC, safety testing.Appendixes in this book provide tables and descriptions on hardware and software design checklists, guidelines, and development tools for reference. Bold texts in the paragraphs shall represent a development process name, phase name, step name, or a term of the glossary, or an emphasis.Audience: This book is intentionally written for following audience: -Managers and team leaders who need to manage and guide embedded system design and development process effectively.-Engineers and technicians who want to speed up and optimize embedded system design and development process.-New graduates and students who want to study and learn embedded system design and development process.-Interested readers who want explore embedded system design and development process.