Course SMC104
Advanced C Programming for Embedded Systems
Advanced C Programming for Embedded Systems
Duration: 5 Days
Intended Audience
Attendees should have some experience of embedded systems programming and a sound basic knowledge of the C language. Course SMC103, "Introduction to C Programming for Embedded Systems" provides suitable background.
Course Overview
The course emphasises the implementation of disciplined and well structured code and the design of modules with clean interfaces. Topics include:
- Advanced use of dynamic data structures and algorithms for manipulating them.
- Structured interrupt handling
- Implementation of simple schedulers and operating systems
- Working with embedded operating systems
- Understanding standard techniques for inter-process communication, and their uses.
- Finite state machines, statecharts, and their uses
- Advanced algorithms and research-oriented approaches
Lab exercises are used to consolidate key concepts.
The course uses PIC16, PIC18, and PIC24 / dsPIC processors as a platform for hands-on work. However, the techniques taught can be readily applied to other architectures. Similarly, the course uses uCOSII and CMX as example operating systems, but Inter-Process Communication techniques are covered in a generic way so that they can be applied to other architectures and operating systems.
Course Benefits
Students completing this course will considerably improve the discipline and rigour with which they design and write embedded systems applications in C.
You'll be able to implement classical data structures such as circular buffers, linked lists, and trees -- and you'll know when it's appropriate to use them.
You'll be exposed to a variety of advanced programming idioms and algorithms with their associated data structures, for tasks such as indexing, data compression and error detection.
You'll learn to write event driven programs, to implement Finite State Machines, and to design hierarchical state machines using statecharts.
You'll learn structured programming techniques for implementing multi-tasking applications, and you'll be able to work with embedded operating systems as well as the standard inter-process communication idioms such as producer-consumer, workcrew and monitors.
Course Contents
Intensive overview of essential C concepts and idioms
- Data types, data structures, pointers and arrays
- Using pointers to search collections of data
Arrays and buffers
- Circular buffers
- Polygonal buffers
- I/O vectors
Linked Lists in depth
- Singly linked and doubly linked lists
- Using lists to implements FIFO queues and LIFO queues (stacks)
- Using lists of linked lists
- Using linked list nodes containing void * pointers to implement heterogeneous collections of data
- Using linked lists to implement resizeable arrays
Binary trees, their uses and their relations
- Basic binary trees
- Self-balancing binary trees (AVL, Red-Black, Splay)
- Heaps and their uses
- Huffman encoding
- Priority queues
Error detection
- CRC checksums (16 bit and 32 bit)
Implementing simple memory management schemes
Implementing simple flash memory file systems
State Machines and Statecharts
- Event driven programming
- Basic FSMs
- Pattern matching
- Parsing
- State driven hardware and communication protocols
- Implementing FSMs using switch statements
- Implementing FSMs using a table driven approach
- Limitations of FSMs
- Extended FSMs and hierarchical FSMs
- Extending FSMs by adding variables and conditional transitions
- Nesting state machines (push down automata)
Statecharts
- Hierachical FSMs and extended FSMs (simple statecharts)
- Orthogonal statecharts and concurrency
- Active objects - linking multi-tasking, message passing and event driven programming
Basic operating systems and multi-tasking concepts
- Task structures
- Task life cycle
- Task management
- Task data structures
- Task queues
- Message queues
- Semaphores (counting, binary, mutex)
- Monitors
- Pipes
- Memory management services
- Signals
- Timers
- Device drivers
Standard Inter-Process Communication Idioms
- Producer - Consumer
- Monitors
- Readers and Writers
- Workcrew