An Academic Paper entitled "Embedded Systems in an Engineering Science Curriculum" will be presented at the 2009 ASEE/IEEE (American Society for Engineering Education/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Frontiers in Education Conference, October 18-21, 2009 in San Antonio, Texas.
The Paper to be presented is based on the work accomplished at the Embedded and Digital Systems Center in the Department of Engineering Sciences at Trinity University. Genesi is the primary corporate sponsor of the Center.
University Professor Dr. Kevin Nickels is responsible for the relevant curriculum and oversees the Center's activities. Genesi's Matt Sealey has been supporting the Lab as a Research Scholar for the last year and co-authored the Paper. Thanks also go to André Siegel of Genesi for his help in producing diagrams for the Paper.
Abstract – The Embedded Systems Portability project investigates how to acquaint students in an engineering science curriculum with several important modern trends and practices in embedded system design. An overview of the program is given, and the specific objectives of several elective courses in electrical engineering are presented. The project also aims to provide a flexible but powerful controller for use in designs, most notably the open-ended senior design course. As these students are largely not deeply disciplinary, the trends of modular programming and functional portability need to be presented while minimizing prerequisite knowledge and skillsets. An embedded System on a Chip utilizing an ARM or a Power Architecture core is connected to a PCI-connected Complex Programmable Logic Device to provide computation power, flexible input/output, and a high bandwidth connection between the two. This powerful combination is connected to one of three representative plants for control. Example projects illustrating the portions of the system under study in several courses at Trinity are described.