SWE 4211 - Real-time Systems

2 lecture hours 2 lab hours 3 credits

Course Description
This course introduces students to software design and development of real time distributed systems. Real-time applications include flight control systems, vehicle control systems, industrial processes, life-support systems, robotic manipulators, and multimedia applications. Special attention is paid to scheduling, latency minimization, bandwidth constraints, and other design issues that impact the design of these systems. Team based laboratory assignments provide experience in the design and implementation of realistic applications using a real-time operating system, cross compilation, and embedded development boards.
Prereq: CSC 2210, CSC 3210 (quarter system prereq: CS 2711, CS 3840)
Note: None
This course meets the following Raider Core CLO Requirement: None

Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Understand concepts of time-critical computing and identify real-time systems
Understand real-time kernels and task scheduling
Understand concepts of reliability in relation to real-time software
Develop software using cross compilation development environments
Construct software requiring inter-task communication and synchronization using shared memory, message queues, signals, semaphores, and mutexes
Construct distributed real-time applications using a real-time operating system
Justify the design of a network protocol based upon requisite performance characteristics.
Construct software using UDP and TCP/IP protocols
Identify real time constraints for a software system based upon physical behavior
Analyze the performance of a real-time system and verify that software is meeting real time constraints
Use software configuration management practices to work as a team on a software development project

Prerequisites by Topic
Operating systems concepts

Scheduling, including round robin scheduling, priority scheduling, FCFS scheduling
Synchronization and concurrent programming concepts (semaphores, mutexes, etc.)
Interprocess communications using pipes and sockets
Multithreading
Linking

C and C++ programming topics:

The C/C++ compilation model
Structures
Memory management
Usage of pointers
Arrays
Enumerations
Preprocessor operations
Rudimentary file IO
Usage of a debugger to debug C/C++ code

Course Topics

An overview of real time systems
Latency and the impact of latency on software design
The hardware/software interface for real time systems and IOT devices
Basic measurement with an oscilliscope
The measurement CPU utilization
Review of multithreading
The usage of periodic and aperiodic tasks in software design
Basic sockets and networking
Rudimentary design of a network protocol
Rudimentary PWM concepts
Sensor types and operation (optical, ultrasonic, analog, digital, etc.)
Rate monotonic analysis and design criteria
Introduction to OpenCV
Image transmission across a network
Rudimentary queuing theory
The usage embedded libraries and cross compilation
Software failure case studies related to real-time systems
Ethical aspects of real-time systems development

Laboratory Topics

Getting started with the cross platform development on the Raspberry Pi
Measuring latency and basic GPIO operations on the Raspberry Pi
Developing a basic game on the Raspberry PI using GPIO
Rudimentary networking and remote interfacing of the Raspberry Pi
Basic robot control
Designing and performing and experiment on a sensor
Designing and implementing a streaming protocol
Basic sensor automation on the robot
RMA analysis of robot performance
Rudimentary image detection
Rudimentary autonomous operation of the robot
Advanced topics

Coordinator
Dr. Walter Schilling

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