Embedded Software Development Research Articles

Collaboration between Embedded Hardware Design and Embedded Software Development

Collaboration between Embedded Hardware Design and Embedded Software Development

Evolution of Nuvoton Microcontroller-based Education Board

Abstract: The novel coronavirus pandemic has not only affected people's health. The pandemic has also affected their social life and work. For all the reasons mentioned, international trade has suffered and is still in the process of recovery. Especially in the semiconductor industry, many manufacturers postponed their deliveries to future periods and this triggered the chip crisis. Many hightech industries, including the automotive industry, were deeply affected by the consequences of the crisis, with factories halting or slowing down production. Despite the shortage of chip stocks, Nuvoton has a large amount of Microcontroller Units (MCUs), but due to the shortage of resources, education and libraries, software developers have not been able to integrate their products in a limited time. In this paper, the Nuvoton Education Board has presented 20 common examples for embedded software developers and beginners. The PCB is designed considering all modules connected to separate General Purpose Input Output (GPIO) pins to make multiple module examples without changing the peripherals and pin configuration of the MCU. Clock configuration has been simplified and unnecessary details have been meticulously removed to make the examples easily understandable. Nuvoton NuMaker M263KI V1.3 was added on the designed PCB. The PCB contains almost all the necessary electronics to learn embedded software and use Nuvoton MCUs in industrial projects. The board is supported with user interfaces and printed documentation. The codes are explained with command lines to teach users even small details. A patent application has been filed for the proposed education board.

USE OF MICRO-SERVICES ARCHITECTURE AND CONTAINERIZATION FOR THE FAST DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF THE CUBESAT NANOSATELLITES SOFTWARE

Abstract. CubeSats as a sub-class of nanosatellites have become a game-changer in the industry of scientific research and exploration of the new space technologies. Their cost effectiveness, relative ease of manufacturing, and predicted lifecycle are the main factors of success, leading to roughly 2280 nanosatellites being put on the Earth’s LEO. However, many issues still arise in regard to the effective development, testing, and successful mission control of the CubeSats. The authors of the article suggest the combination of well-known software development processes, design paradigms, patterns, and techniques, that are creating a new way of making CubeSat software development as flexible and as easy as possible. The very first part of the research suggests the outlook on modern software development processes and their evolution over the last years. The second part of the research looks into virtualization and containerization principles as the architectural response to complex software development. The third and fourth parts of the research concentrated on the selection and proper testing of the container execution engine and its performance with the most common algorithm used in embedded software development. Via the porting and proper performance test of the WASM3 WebAssembly interpreter, the authors provide valuable research in regard to the practical use of micro-services, and containerization in the CubeSats. For the sake of the usefulness and completeness of the porting and performance testing – the authors suggest the most-known STEM platforms as the test environments. Concluding the research by the practical porting and testing steps, and found limitations of the containerization, the authors come up with a newly defined concept of so-called Software Defined Satellites. Such a concept could help the industry to minimize risks in reusing the software, perform several missions on the same CubeSat spacecraft, and thus, drastically decrease the cost of CubeSats launches.

Construction of computer-assisted English writing teaching model from the perspective of the Internet of Things

Abstract To solve the problems of the traditional embedded software development teaching platform, such as the heavy load on the server side, resulting in the slow response speed and poor experience of users, this paper proposes a computer-aided English writing teaching model from the perspective of the Internet of things. Based on the cloud platform, the system manages the resources of computers scattered on the server and client, to improve the efficiency of resource retrieval. In addition, based on the fuzzy logic model, the system can evaluate and evaluate students’ knowledge and learning achievements according to students’ preferences for cognition and knowledge acquisition. The experimental results show that motivation (μmot), attitude (μatt), extroversion (μext) and self-esteem (µsel) are positively correlated with students’ performance, and the data are 0.608, 0.533, 0.595 and 0.477 respectively, while introversion (µint) and anxiety (µanx) are negatively correlated with students’ performance, and the data are −0.464, −0.618. Conclusion: from the perspective of the Internet of Things, the computer-assisted English writing teaching model has good performance and can play a positive role in improving students’ grades.

Interaction Between Agile Methods and Organizational Culture – A Qualitative Study

Background: Agile practices have gained popularity in the 21st century. There is also a growing body of research on agile methods. While some earlier research on agile practices and organizational culture exists with the assumption that the optimal combination of agile practices and organizational culture exists, we examine how agile methods and organizational culture interact and are mutually adjusted. Method: To find out how agile methods and organizational culture are related in practice, we conducted 50 semi-structured interviews with software and embedded software developers from five Japanese companies and three software teams from Finland. Results: Adopting agile methods does not necessarily cause convergence of organizational culture toward democratic which seems to be most compatible with archetypal agile practices. Agile methods can be adapted to organizational cultures that are sometimes challenging to modify. We demonstrate that companies tried to fit agile practices into hierarchical organizational cultures, demonstrating that organizational culture can occasionally be viewed as an exogenous variable influenced firm-, product-, and industry-specific features. Also, it is possible to transform organizational cultures to democratic. The examples demonstrate how companies alter their culture in part through HRM techniques. It should be noted, however, that these efforts to conform to culture can have some restrictions. Conclusion: There is not a single ideal combination of agile methods and organizational culture, despite what some earlier studies suggested. The results show how organizational culture and agile methods interact and adapt to one another in different ways. According to several earlier studies, different organizational cultures may support different facets of agile methods. They do not presuppose organizational culture diversity; in that it goes beyond the notion of a one-to-one relationship between agile methods and democratic organizational culture. While implementing agile practices in various organizational cultural contexts, practitioners must consider how agile methods and organizational culture are interconnected.

An Embedded Software Development Framework for Internet of Things Devices

Internet of things (IoT) devices are mostly ubiquitous in this day and age, and it is hard to imagine a life without them, especially in the productive sectors (industry, agriculture, and automotive) and in our daily life activities (consumer electronics, home automation, and intelligent buildings). The high demand for these devices has created significant competition to provide them at the best price, at the right time, and with the best features. The trend in which these devices have increased their product features has resulted in their embedded software being more complex, leading to extended development and testing times. Consequently, as the types of advanced IoT products keep diversifying, the field maintenance of all the different models deployed grows more complicated. This paper proposes an embedded software development framework for IoT devices independent of the microcontroller architecture, the compiler, and the development environment. This framework allows having a common software baseline between different projects, which shortens the learning curve, development time, and module validation while allowing code reuse for embedded software professionals. A proof-of-concept evaluation is also presented to demonstrate the efficiency and reliability of the obtained embedded software code for a simple but representative IoT application.

Питання вибору і кваліфікації засобів розробки програмного забезпечення для електронних систем автоматичного керування авіаційних двигунів

The introductory part of the article provides information that Element JSC is one of the leading enterprises in Ukraine in the scientific and technical direction "Electronic systems for measuring, parameters monitoring and controlling aircraft engines". Because of cooperation with Ivchenko-Progress SE and Motor Sich JSC, Element JSC has manufactured more than 250 EEC units of the RDC-450M family for various modifications of the AI-450 Turboshaft/Turboprop engines. The software of these EEC units is certified according to the DO-178B/ED-12B. The software of subsequent EEC units under development is planned to be certified according to the state-of-the-art DO-178C/ED-12С guideline, and development tools qualified according to the DO-330/ED-215 guideline will also be used in development. This article is devoted to the issues of selection and qualification of such tools. A review and brief analysis of modern commercial software development tools for embedded systems, including those applied to the STM32 family microcontrollers, which are widely used in the JSC Element products, is given. The qualification of the user required for operating these development tools is indicated. Information is given on software verification tools, features of the interpretation of the “verification” term in DO-178C/ED-12C. As an example, the SPI tool is given, which has been successfully used for many years at Element JSC for the functional development of EEC units. The process of determining the level of qualification of instruments using three special criteria is described, an algorithm for qualification is given, and examples from the practice of Element JSC are given. Information is given on recently appearing commercial DO-178 support packages for embedded software developers in the qualification of tools, an algorithm of operation is given, shortcomings and possible problems are assessed. Finally, it is concluded that the process of selecting and further qualification of tools has a serious impact on labor costs in the certification of software for embedded systems for aviation applications.

Facilitating Reuse of Functions in Embedded Software

Developing software-intensive embedded systems is a significant challenge as embedded systems have become more complex and dynamic for integrating various constraints (e.g., real-time performance, design, and functional safety). In general, software practitioners reuse code to reduce development time for implementing required functionalities. However, embedded software development still lacks code reuse on a large scale due to its intricate constraints. This paper presents an approach to identifying reusable functions and their relationships from the legacy embedded software for faster development reducing functionality testing time. A python tool is developed to automatically extract the reusable functions and present them in a feature model. The search time for finding reusable functions speeds up when they are placed as features in a feature model. We conducted experiments on three GitHub embedded software projects (elevator, infotainment, and health monitoring systems). The experimental results find that our proposed approach reduces the feature search time by 59.0%, 49.8%, and 74.5%, respectively, compared to the manual searching approach for 50 features.

Ontology Driven Testing Strategies for IoT Applications

Internet-of-Things (IoT) has attained a major share in embedded software development. The new era of specialized intelligent systems requires adaptation of customized software engineering approaches. Currently, software engineering has merged the development phases with the technologies provided by industrial automation. The improvements are still required in testing phase for the software developed to IoT solutions. This research aims to assist in developing the testing strategies for IoT applications, therein ontology has been adopted as a knowledge representation technique to different software engineering processes. The proposed ontological model renders 101 methodology by using Protégé. After completion, the ontology was evaluated in three-dimensional view by the domain experts of software testing, IoT and ontology engineering. Satisfied results of the research are showed in interest of the specialists regarding proposed ontology development and suggestions for improvements. The Proposed reasoning-based ontological model for development of testing strategies in IoT application contributes to increase the general understanding of tests in addition to assisting for the development of testing strategies for different IoT devices.

A Process Model for Service-Oriented Development of Embedded Software Systems

The concepts of service-oriented computing (SOC) have previously been used in the embedded systems domain, mostly at the device level in ad hoc manners to achieve advantages of device integration. However, SOC has not been used for the development of embedded software systems (ESS), i.e., software controlling the embedded devices. To fill this gap, a process model is proposed in this article that allows the systematic development of ESS based on SOC concepts. The proposed process consists of analysis and design phases of embedded software development. The analysis phase is concerned with the collection of system information and preparation for system design. Based on this, the service-based software architecture is developed in the design phase. The effectiveness of the proposed process model is demonstrated through its application in the Smart Home case study.

Learning based compilation of embedded applications targeting minimal energy consumption

Abstract The choice of correct optimization passes during compilation is one of the major factors that determines the performance and energy consumption of an application when executed on a target hardware. However, making such a choice is challenging since it requires knowledge of target architecture, code features and compiler pass interdependence. Software developers mostly rely on heuristic approaches while choosing the optimization passes. However, such heuristic solutions and random choices often yield sub-optimal results. In this work, we propose an automated technique of determining the optimal compiler optimization setting for minimum energy consumption utilizing power profile results and performance characteristics from real hardware and machine learning models. The proposed approach on one hand brings about reduction in energy consumption and on the other releases embedded software developers from making the complicated compiler optimization choices for each application. Our proposed five phase strategy when implemented on multi-core ARM based ODROID-XU4 experimental platform using the Clang Compiler shows a maximum of 8.43% improvement in power dissipation and a maximum of 27.27% in energy consumption for MiBench and Polybench representative benchmarks in comparison to state-of-art energy aware compilation strategies.

SISTEMAS OPERACIONAIS PARA SOFTWARE EMBARCADO: UM MAPEAMENTO SISTEMÁTICO DA LITERATURA

Embedded systems are constantly increasing today, becomingubiquitous in people's lives. Today there are a widerange of devices, so every day we have new technologies,optimizations, and techniques being applied to embeddedsystems as they need a high degree of reliability, and security,pose new challenges to development. This systematicmapping of the literature (MSL) aims to search for signsthat show the real impact of using a real-time operatingsystem (RTOS) in embedded software. We carry out anMSL using the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Digital Library,ISI Web of Science, Science @ Direct, Springer Link, andScopus databases, looking for articles that relate RTOS andEmbedded Systems to be reviewed. 245 articles were foundon the topic. We excluded articles that were out of contextmaintaining 21 articles on performance, RTOS, embeddedsystem, embedded software development, advantages anddisadvantages regarding the use of RTOS. We conductedan MSL with the purpose of identifying the main methods,diculties, and solutions in the embedded system development.After the research we realized there are no articlesthat lead to a reasonable conclusion because none of the articlesanalyzed clearly show the relationship between the useof an RTOS in embedded systems and the real impact, pros,cons, and obstacles for adopting it. DOI: 10.36558/rsc.v11i2.7267

Survey on software defect prediction techniques

ABSTRACT Recent advancements in technology have emerged the requirements of hardware and software applications. Along with this technical growth, software industries also have faced drastic growth in the demand of software for several applications. For any software industry, developing good quality software and maintaining its eminence for user end is considered as most important task for software industrial growth. In order to achieve this, software engineering plays an important role for software industries. Software applications are developed with the help of computer programming where codes are written for desired task. Generally, these codes contain some faulty instances which may lead to the buggy software development cause due to software defects. In the field of software engineering, software defect prediction is considered as most important task which can be used for maintaining the quality of software. Defect prediction results provide the list of defect-prone source code artefacts so that quality assurance team scan effectively allocate limited resources for validating software products by putting more effort on the defect-prone source code. As the size of software projects becomes larger, defect prediction techniques will play an important role to support developers as well as to speed up time to market with more reliable software products. One of the most exhaustive and pricey part of embedded software development is consider as the process of finding and fixing the defects. Due to complex infrastructure, magnitude, cost and time limitations, monitoring and fulfilling the quality is a big challenge, especially in automotive embedded systems. However, meeting the superior product quality and reliability is mandatory. Hence, higher importance is given to V&V (Verification & Validation). Software testing is an integral part of software V&V, which is focused on promising accurate functionality and long-term reliability of software systems. Simultaneously, software testing requires much effort, cost, infrastructure and expertise as the development. The costs and efforts elevate in safety critical software systems. Therefore, it is essential to have a good testing strategy for any industry with high software development costs. In this work, we are planning to develop an efficient approach for software defect prediction by using soft computing based machine learning techniques which helps to predict optimize the features and efficiently learn the features.

Secure Embedded Software Development

People, processes and technology are key when it comes to secure embedded software development

Development and clinical implementation of tailored image analysis tools for COVID-19 in the midst of the pandemic: The synergetic effect of an open, clinically embedded software development platform and machine learning

PurposeDuring the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, radiology departments faced a substantial increase in chest CT admissions coupled with the novel demand for quantification of pulmonary opacities. This article describes how our clinic implemented an automated software solution for this purpose into an established software platform in 10 days. The underlying hypothesis was that modern academic centers in radiology are capable of developing and implementing such tools by their own efforts and fast enough to meet the rapidly increasing clinical needs in the wake of a pandemic. MethodDeep convolutional neural network algorithms for lung segmentation and opacity quantification on chest CTs were trained using semi-automatically and manually created ground-truth (Ntotal = 172). The performance of the in-house method was compared to an externally developed algorithm on a separate test subset (N = 66). ResultsThe final algorithm was available at day 10 and achieved human-like performance (Dice coefficient = 0.97). For opacity quantification, a slight underestimation was seen both for the in-house (1.8 %) and for the external algorithm (0.9 %). In contrast to the external reference, the underestimation for the in-house algorithm showed no dependency on total opacity load, making it more suitable for follow-up. ConclusionsThe combination of machine learning and a clinically embedded software development platform enabled time-efficient development, instant deployment, and rapid adoption in clinical routine. The algorithm for fully automated lung segmentation and opacity quantification that we developed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic was ready for clinical use within just 10 days and achieved human-level performance even in complex cases.

Introducing Control Theory in Industry: the case of V-model embedded software developers

This paper presents an education course on Control Theory suitable for embedded software developers that are familiar with the V-model. The need of such a course is due to the specific audience and business needs, but it can be easily adapted and employed in other domains. The course is structured in terms of a Control theoretical workflow that resembles the development workflow provided by the V-model. Each phase represents an education module. The effectiveness of the course is evaluated through questionnaires and analysis of the software deliveries quality of some employees before and after having attended the course.

Interdisciplinary Technical Exercises for Informatics Teacher Students

More and more of today’s devices are electronic and software operated. Since they measure the signals of the real world and act as a result of processing, informatics is getting closer to interdisciplinary fields. The technology of everyday devices, automotive industry, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT) are based al-so on engineering, physics, electronics, biology and other fields besides informatics. Accordingly, the in-terdisciplinarity is important in education too, it is essential to teach related solutions of technology for the informatics teacher students since they will certainly need it during their teaching practice. Although the development of technology is still very rapid, the main principles of operation remain the same, so education should focus on this rather than on the teaching of a current software development environ-ment or hardware realization. Following this idea, we have worked out several laboratory exercises for our programme of informatics teacher students. During their work they construct some circuits, write the code and practice the fundamental methods of embedded software development. We report on how they could understand and learn the most important principles during working on an educational, a commer-cial, an industrial and a medical field related exercise. The associated experience-based learning helps sys-tematic understanding and development of creativity. Based on our experience, students are getting more self-confident by the use of modern technical systems, which we consider particularly important.

The Remote Experimentation as the Practical-Oriented Basis of Inclusive Engineering Education

The challenges and solutions for inclusive engineering education are discussed in this paper. We propose remote experimentation as the practical-oriented basis to train engineers with disabilities in the fields of Computer Science and Information Technologies. The structure and the functionality of international GOLDi network that unites partner universities from Germany, Australia, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia is given. The possibilities of REIoT complex for studying the features of embedded systems design and Internet of Things technologies as well as an overview of ISRT laboratory for embedded software development and testing are given. The presented Remote Laboratories are successfully used to improve educational services quality and accessibility as well as to strengthen the practical component of the learning process.

An exploratory study of waste in software development organizations using agile or lean approaches: A multiple case study at 14 organizations

ContextThe principal focus of lean is the identification and elimination of waste from the process with respect to maximizing customer value. Similarly, the purpose of agile is to maximize customer value and minimize unnecessary work and time delays. In both cases the concept of waste is important. Through an empirical study, we explore how waste is approached in agile software development organizations. ObjectiveThis paper explores the concept of waste in agile/lean software development organizations and how it is defined, used, prioritized, reduced, or eliminated in practice MethodThe data were collected using semi-structured open-interviews. 23 practitioners from 14 embedded software development organizations were interviewed representing two core roles in each organization. ResultsVarious wastes, categorized in 10 different categories, were identified by the respondents. From the mentioned wastes, not all were necessarily waste per se but could be symptoms caused by wastes. From the seven wastes of lean, Task-switching was ranked as the most important, and Extra-features, as the least important wastes according to the respondents’ opinion. However, most companies do not have their own or use an established definition of waste, more importantly, very few actively identify or try to eliminate waste in their organizations beyond local initiatives on project level. ConclusionIn order to identify, recognize and eliminate waste, a common understanding, and a joint and holistic view of the concept is needed. It is also important to optimize the whole organization and the whole product, as waste on one level can be important on another, thus sub-optimization should be avoided. Furthermore, to achieve a sustainable and effective waste handling, both the short-term and the long-term perspectives need to be considered.

Interval-based resource usage verification by translation into Horn clauses and an application to energy consumption

AbstractMany applications require conformance with specifications that constrain the use of resources, such as execution time, energy, bandwidth, etc. We present a configurable framework for static resource usage verification where specifications can include data size-dependent resource usage functions, expressing both lower and upper bounds. Ensuring conformance with respect to such specifications is an undecidable problem. Therefore, to statically check such specifications, our framework infers the same type of resource usage functions, which safely approximate the actual resource usage of the program, and compares them against the specification. We review how this framework supports several languages and compilation output formats by translating them to an intermediate representation based on Horn clauses and using the configurability of the framework to describe the resource semantics of the input language. We provide a detailed formalization and extend the framework so that both resource usage specification and analysis/verification output can include preconditions expressing intervals for the input data sizes for which assertions are intended to hold, proved, or disproved. Most importantly, we also extend the classes of functions that can be checked. We also report on and provide results from an implementation within the Ciao/CiaoPP framework, as well as on a practical tool built by instantiating this framework for the verification of energy consumption specifications for imperative/embedded programs. Finally, we show as an example how embedded software developers can use this tool, in particular, for determining values for program parameters that ensure meeting a given energy budget while minimizing the loss in quality of service.