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Introduction to embedded systems : a cyber-physical systems approach (2nd ed.)
Lee E., Seshia S., The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017. 568 pp. Type: Book (978-0-262533-81-2)
Date Reviewed: Mar 1 2018

The design of embedded computing systems has become more important as wireless systems, smart appliances, automotive systems, and many other cyber-physical systems are built upon an embedded system. This book introduces many concepts related to modeling, design, and analysis of embedded systems, and it helps system designers to gather general information and learn the basics. It presents an introduction about the main concepts and provides resources for further information. Therefore, it is useful as an introduction and offers guidance for people involved in embedded system design.

After a brief introduction to cyber-physical systems through examples in chapter 1, the concepts are explained in three main parts, which discuss modeling, design, and analysis of embedded system development phases.

Part 1 presents the modeling of embedded systems. Chapter 2 explains the continuous dynamics of physical systems by reviewing classical mechanics, physical system properties, and feedback control. Because all of the mathematical equations related to the concepts are provided in detail, it might be helpful to refer to Appendix A before reading this section. In chapter 3, finite-state machines, which have discrete dynamics, are explained by introducing related terms. Chapter 4 describes hybrid systems, which are the combination of continuous and discrete systems, and emphasizes that a cyber-physical system integrates both and is an example of a hybrid system. Chapter 5 introduces the concurrent and hierarchical compositions of state machines, and in chapter 6 concurrent composition is detailed by including synchronous-reactive models, dataflow models, and timed models. All models are explained by specifying model actors and model definitions.

Part 2 presents the design of embedded systems. Chapter 7 introduces sensors and actuators, which are two main devices in an electronic system. It covers models of sensors and actuators by including mathematical definitions of each model, and describes a few real-world sensors (like microphones) and actuators (like motor control). Chapter 8 briefly gives information about some available processors that are specialized for embedded applications, including microcontrollers, digital signal processors (DSPs), and graphics processing units (GPUs). It also overviews basic parallelism concepts that directly affect embedded application performance. Chapter 9 introduces another very important performance factor, memory systems. It briefly explains the main memory technologies (random access memory, nonvolatile memory), memory hierarchy (register files, caches), and memory models (stack, dynamic memory allocation). Chapter 10 explains embedded input/output interfaces of processors and the mechanisms that handle communication between the hardware and the running software in an embedded system. Chapter 11 explains the ways to translate sequential code into parallel code by introducing threads and message-passing paradigms and providing code snippets written in C. Chapter 12 provides information about task scheduling basics and implementation details.

Part 3 presents the analysis of embedded systems. Chapter 13 explains temporal logic, a precise mathematical notation to represent time-related system properties, to use in formal specification of embedded systems. Chapter 14 introduces some concepts to check conformance of a state machine against a specification. Chapter 15 describes model checking and reachability analysis, which are algorithmic methods used to check a formal specification. Chapter 16 presents quantitative program analysis techniques with respect to execution time constraints for software-controlled systems. It also provides a list for static and measurement-based tools that are helpful for execution-time analysis. Chapter 17 explains basic security issues that are crucial for cyber-physical systems. It introduces cryptographic primitives including encryption, decryption, and secure communication protocols.

The book has two appendices. While the first includes notations for sets and functions, the second briefly reviews complexity theory topics.

While reading the book, I frequently had difficulty understanding mathematical equations and technical explanations given in several sections. Moreover, the book provides just an introduction and general information about the concepts, especially in parallelism, memory systems, security, and so on; it is essential to refer to the resources with more detailed descriptions to be able to get enough information about those subjects. The book is helpful for providing the fundamentals and giving readers a basic understanding, but requires further reading for deeper knowledgde of the concepts.

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Reviewer:  Isil Oz Review #: CR145894 (1805-0189)
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