Embedded Systems Architecture and Hardware Design: Building Blocks, Circuits, Intercommunications, IC and Discrete Components

Embedded Systems are Ubiquitous. Three Design Cases Discussed: 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. Almost each and every electronic gadget around us is an embedded system, for example: Smart phone, palmtop, digital watch, digital camera, printer, scanner, home security system, digital thermal controller, smart connected vehicle, digital weight scale, and many more. The last three types of embedded systems are discussed in this book.

This Book: This book shall assist readers to learn about embedded system architecture and hardware by presenting hardware/software architectures, building blocks (CPU, memories, I/Os, sensors, displays, and power circuits), physical ICs and discrete components. The content description is a top-down approach.

Embedded Systems Basic, Design and Development Process: This book begins by defining what an embedded system is. Chapter 1 present classification and aspect of embedded systems, describes embedded systems’ hardware and software characteristics. Chapter 2 illustrates the four phases of embedded systems design and development Process: plan, design, integrated development (ID), design verification and validation (DV&V).

Embedded Systems Architecture: Three architecture design cases, Digital Thermal Controller (DTC), Digital Weight Scale (DWS), and Smart Connected Vehicle (SCV), are presented in Chapter 3. The first case, Digital Thermal Controller (DTC) device, employs the Microchip PIC32MX675F256 microcontroller plus a LAN8740A Ethernet PHY transceiver IC. The second case, Digital Weight Scale (DWS) project, adopts Texas Instrument’s CC2541F256 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) SoC as the machine-to-machine (M2M) core. The third case, Smart Connected Vehicle (SCV) design, use Sierra Wireless CDMA module SL3010T (plus CC2541F256 BLE) as the central processing unit (CPU). Each design case starts from describing technology background, and then followed by function requirements. Hardware and software architectures are derived and presented, protocol layers, if applicable, are described.

Hardware Design Principles, Considerations, Design Process Flow, Concepts and Definitions: Chapter 4 describes principles and considerations to successfully design the embedded systems hardware. Chapter 5 presents the hardware design process flow for embedded systems design. Chapter 6 discusses some embedded system hardware concepts and definitions.

Hardware Architectures, building blocks, Circuits, Components, and More: The hardware architectures, building blocks, major intelligent devices, schematics circuits, integrated circuits (ICs), discrete components, and operational theories for three design cases which presented in Chapter 3 are discussed in Chapter 7. The architecture and functional diagram of PIC32MX675F256 MCU, CC2541F256 Bluetooth SoC, and Ethernet transceiver LAN8740 are presented and discussed. Section 7.1.2 presents “Steps to select a CPU” and use design case No. 1 (DTC) as an example.

Integrated Development and Development Tools: Chapter 8 describes embedded systems hardware/software Integrated Development (ID) and Design Verification (DV) phase.

Audience: This book is intentionally written for following audience. A basic understanding the concepts of computer engineering may be required. 1. Managers/Team leaders who need to manage and guide embedded system hardware and software projects effectively. 2. Engineers/Designers who want to speed up and optimize embedded system hardware and software architectures and design.3. New graduates/students who want to study and practice embedded system hardware and software architectures and design. 4. Interested readers who want to learn and explore embedded system hardware and software architecture and design.