Dr. Albert M. K. Cheng
534-PGH Spring Office hours: TTh 3:00-4:00pm and by appointment
Synopsis:
Computers are increasingly used to monitor and control physical processes . These real-time embedded systems must satisfy stringent timing and reliability constraints in addition to functional correctness requirement s. Examples of these embedded systems include the new generation of airplane avionics, the Space Station control software, high-performance network and telephone switching systems, medical monitoring instruments, multimedia tools, virtual reality systems, robotic controllers, PDAs (running Pocket PC, Palm OS, and Linux Embedix OS), and wireless phones. This course introduces a formal framework and powerful techniques for the design and development of this class of systems. These theoretical foundations are followed by hands-on practice in employing these advanced techniques to build, analyze, and verify different modules of actual real-time systems. Scheduling tools and OSs (such as VxWorks) are introduced. Hands-on projects in C/C++ are performed in the lab's Tornado/VxWorks environment with multi-platform timing analyzer. Programming in real-time/rule-based languages such as Ada, EQL, MRL, and OPS5 is also described. Specification and verification tools such as Statechart, Modechart, and Estella are used to help design experimental real-time systems. Embedded programming techniques are studied.
Course outline:
Introduction to real-time systems; System decomposition and scheduling techniques; Programming language and operating systems support; Formal specification, analysis, and verification techniques; Embedded programming techniques; Sensor Input/Actuator Output; Power-aware computing (dynamic voltage/frequency scaling, shutdown techniques); Real-time rule-based expert systems; Fault detection, fault recovery, and reliability issues; Time-critical distributed systems and communication networks.
Reading materials:
Required textbook:
Real-Time Systems: Scheduling, Analysis, and Verification
(John Wiley and Sons)
by Prof. Albert M. K. Cheng.
VxWorks and Tornado user's guides are available at the lab's PCs. Tutorials are available on-line.
Recommended prerequisite:
Computer organization
Course requirements and grading:
Homeworks (40%, typically two short programs and two written assignments), two exams (60%, 1 at midterm, 1 on last day of class, no final exam).