Embedded Application Development. A Procedure Based on VxWorks Real-Time Operating System

摘要

The number of mechatronic devices that has been incorporated to automotive systems increases continuously. These devices require the integration of several subsystems with heterogeneous reliability and availability requirements and also with different complexity level. Control systems such as those used in drive-by-wire, airbags, anti-lock braking systems and speed control applications impose rigorous time constraints for their correct operation. Therefore they are considered hard real-time applications that need deterministic responses. Other subsystems like that used for infotainment can be considered soft real-time system and they only require a specific level of CPU bandwidth to work properly. Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) is able to deal with both kinds of subsystems, fulfilling deterministic behavior and handling diversity and complexity. This work presents a method that adopt VxWorks RTOS to fulfill this specialized and non-trivial requirements, this procedure is analyzed using a case study based on a Xilinx morphware and hardware platform and a Control Area Network (CAN) interface to illustrate the technological challenge, and the tools integration from the physical media through the embedded application. As result, a flexible and versatile system is obtained in terms of processing and storage capability. The procedure is hardware independent and has open characteristics that allow exhaustive reliability tests and analysis.