A C-Based Framework for Low-Cost Real-Time Embedded Systems

As real-time embedded systems are becoming ubiquitous, thanks to their sheer inclusion in all kinds of low-cost consumer appliances and the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the pressure to enhance firmware development effectiveness and reduce time to market is rising. At the same time, there is a drive towards higher-level programming paradigms, to improve software quality with respect to traditional techniques. This paper presents a framework that enables programmers to deploy typical embedded real-time firmware more conveniently than using plain C-language programming, by abstracting away from tedious, low-level details, such as I/O configuration and operations, as well as the ad-hoc management of multiple, diverse network technologies. Moreover, unlike other proposals, the framework is able to accommodate both time and event-driven applications. Experimental results presented in the paper corroborated the viability, convenience, and better expressiveness of the framework with respect to plain C. At the same time, due to its focus on compile-time versus runtime processing, the framework also exhibited a small execution time overhead and memory footprint, thus confirming its suitability even for microcontrollers with little processing power, like the ones typically found in inexpensive embedded and IoT systems.