Book Image

Embedded Systems Architecture

By : Daniele Lacamera
Book Image

Embedded Systems Architecture

By: Daniele Lacamera

Overview of this book

Embedded systems are self-contained devices with a dedicated purpose. We come across a variety of fields of applications for embedded systems in industries such as automotive, telecommunications, healthcare and consumer electronics, just to name a few. Embedded Systems Architecture begins with a bird's eye view of embedded development and how it differs from the other systems that you may be familiar with. You will first be guided to set up an optimal development environment, then move on to software tools and methodologies to improve the work flow. You will explore the boot-up mechanisms and the memory management strategies typical of a real-time embedded system. Through the analysis of the programming interface of the reference microcontroller, you'll look at the implementation of the features and the device drivers. Next, you'll learn about the techniques used to reduce power consumption. Then you will be introduced to the technologies, protocols and security aspects related to integrating the system into IoT solutions. By the end of the book, you will have explored various aspects of embedded architecture, including task synchronization in a multi-threading environment, and the safety models adopted by modern real-time operating systems.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Application protocols


In order to be able to communicate with remote devices and cloud servers in a distributed scenario, embedded systems must implement standard protocols that are compatible with the existing infrastructure. In general, two different approaches are taken when designing remote services:

  • Web-based services
  • Message protocols

The former is mainly the classic, client-server, REST-based communication that is popular in web services accessed through personal computers or portable devices. Web services require no adaptation in particular on the cloud side to support embedded systems, except for the choice of an embedded-friendly cipher set as described in the Securing socket communication section. However, the request-reply communication model introduces some restrictions on the design of distributed applications. The HTTP protocol can be upgraded by common agreement on the two HTTP endpoints, and support WebSocket, which is a protocol providing the abstraction of a symmetric, bidirectional...