Real-Time Embedded Systems

Real-time and networked embedded systems are crucial bridges between the physical and information worlds in the ever-growing pervasiveness of embedded intelligence in industry, infrastructure, and in public and private spaces. They have been identified as society and the economy's emerging "neural systems", and as one of the next big concepts supporting societal changes and economic growth. Intelligence is increasingly embedded in everyday connected objects, fostered by cost/performance improvements and by the spread to wider application fields of the specialized technologies and engineering disciplines once confined to silo domains. While this process gradually builds the IoT, it starts to expose non-trivial timing and other extra-functional requirements and system properties, which are less common in typical computing. Nowadays, embedded systems - the computer systems that are embedded in various kinds of devices and play important roles in specific control functions, have permeated various aspects of industry. Therefore, we can hardly discuss our life and society from now onward without referring to embedded systems. For wide-ranging embedded systems to continue their growth, a number of high-quality fundamental and applied research projects are indispensable.

This book focuses on real-time embedded systems that are present both in traditional relevant application domains, such as industrial automation and control, energy management, automotive, aerospace and defense systems, as well as in emerging domains, such as medical devices, household appliances, mobile multimedia, gaming, and entertainment systems. The research on real-time embedded systems has gained great interest in recent years as a result of the ever-increasing utilization of such systems in the IoT (Internet of Things), industrial IoT, cloud, and edge computing applications. However, the challenge of keeping the development and implementation of real-time systems reliable and efficient, and at the same time low-cost and energy efficient, is becoming more difficult. System designers and developers are faced with the dependability, inflexibility, and often high-cost of specialized or custom-built hardware and software components. In addition, the increase in the implementations of such systems and applications in surveillance and control (e.g., in smart homes, energy systems, manufacturing, automotive and autonomous vehicles, and aerospace), and their special timing requirements, in particular for mission/life-critical systems, bring new challenges and issues in real-time embedded systems. Therefore, emphasis is placed on the investigation of the current advances and trends in new designs, developments, and applications.