Embedded System Education: A Need to be integrated for High Schools

1,2,3,4

M. M. Kazi, 2A. V. Mane, 3R. R. Manza, 4K. V. Kale Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Dr. B. A. M. University, Aurangabad the fact of our embedded system research and education. The different education programs are designed for undergraduates and graduates respectively. At the same time, they must have some prerequisites for embedded system and we will provide practice according to different programs. The curriculum is shown in Figure 1. Prerequisite. Before students begin their study on embedded system, they have to complete some courses as their prerequisites including programming language (mainly C and assembly language), computer organization, computer architecture, microcomputer principles and operating system. These courses are compulsory. Undergraduate program. Basic courses are organized as undergraduate program. In such a program, the basic concepts and theories of embedded system are taught to students. And then they will learn how to programming for embedded system and design a whole system. These basic courses include embedded system introduction, embedded architecture, embedded peripheral, realtime and embedded operating system, embedded development methodology and embedded development environment etc. Graduate program. Advanced contents are provided to graduates in graduate program. Graduates must complete the undergraduate program first before their entering graduate program. The latest progress in embedded system will be taught to graduates. They will read papers under instructions of the teachers. They will organize themselves to complete some research issues. In graduate program, graduates are encouraged to make innovations in embedded system. Practice. In both programs, we also design different types of practice to students including in class practice and out of class practice. Students (including undergraduates and graduates) have to complete some assigned experiments in class. These experiments are compulsory. After that, they can take practice out of class [3].

Abstract: Embedded system education is an enormous challenge for the universities because embedded system is at the intersection of different disciplines and in continuous rapid progress. Outstanding curriculum design of embedded system will keep students close to the requirements from industry. This paper shows that also embedded system concepts can be taught to the high school students. 1. Introduction: Every computer scientist and engineer knows that embedded systems play an important part in our lives. Dozens of small microcontrollers help us through the day, from waking us up in the morning and brewing our coffee to controlling the TV for a relaxing evening. And the microcontroller in a smoke detector even guards us during the night. However, people outside our profession are often unaware of how many embedded systems they posses; they might not even know what a microcontroller is. There are a number of reasons why we, the computer scientists and engineers, should try to change this situation [2]. From an applications perspective, the embedded market forecast is based on the estimated demand in six major applications viz. Computing, Communications, Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Medical and Office Equipment, and Industrial and Military Electronics. Embedded system is often perceived as at the intersection of different disciplines. It is very difficult to teach embedded system as a uniform topic. Fortunately embedded system education has been the focus to the academic community in recent years. Most universities have designed them own embedded system curricula according to their background of their research and education in embedded system. They have proposed their solutions and shared their experiences [3]. The Universities in Maharashtra have the embedded system courses for post graduate students. We are proposing the embedded system course for high school and under graduate education. Today, "building a computer" means buying a motherboard, disks, and other modules, and then bolting them together. There's neither opportunity nor need to learn about the electronics. The curriculum proposed will motivate the high school students to study embedded system and to make inventions the embedded system. 2. Embedded System Curriculum: This curriculum is designed according to the [4] and

students. Fortunately, the curriculum can be taken as supplement to the teaching in class. Invited professors, specialists and senior engineers will give lectures to students. Additionally, some training will also be provided in the curriculum. These lectures and trainings will help students to learn embedded system [3]. 3. Lectures This section describes the content of the lectures should be presented to the high school students during the first two weeks of the course. These concepts were presented early on in the course to give students the tools and understanding they needed to complete their lab assignments and begin their own projects. The lecture period during the last two weeks of the course was divided between giving more lab time to the students to work on their projects and giving students tours of labs at industry tour. We divided the lectures into two major topics: Embedded Systems Concepts and Assembly Language Programming. 3.1. Embedded Systems Concepts We presented a series of lectures that introduces students to embedded systems and their uses in todays world. We describe what embedded systems are and how they are different from other computing systems and presented various examples of some embedded systems we use in everyday life. Based on the restricted experience with computing machines, embedded systems are unknown to many students. When closing this gap the following basic concepts of embedded systems have to be taught [2]: 1. An application in an embedded system often runs indefinitely, i.e. from starting a machine until powering it off. 2. Several tasks can be executed virtually at the same time. 3. Normally some kind of real-time requirement exists. 4. The CPU in an embedded system can have limited resources and a small package with few pins. 5. Program development and execution are not performed on the same device. 6. When debugging a program one cannot easily print intermediate values to a file or the computer screen. 3.2. C Programming The C programming language is used for programming many embedded systems platforms because of its code efficiency and readability, its reduced overhead and development time, and its access to low-level control. Thus it is essential for students to have some C programming knowledge in

Figure 1. Curriculum organization. A. Goals Practice phase in the curriculum is organized and managed in such a way those students who are interesting in embedded technology including undergraduates and graduates. It will help students to study embedded system from the activities of organization. Then they can master knowledge of embedded system further and meet the requirements from research and industry. Curriculum aims at the following goals: Sharing experiences. Sharing experiences among students plays an important in embedded system education. Students can exchange their experiences. It provides the basic platform for the exchange. Students will form their embedded technology community. In such community, they can publish their problems when they learn embedded system and get the help from the community. They can discuss and help each other in this community. During the discussion and assistance, they will understand embedded system more deeply. This is beneficial to them. Having more practice. We have designed many types of practice out of class. Most of such practice is provided through organization. Students will be divided into different teams according to the types of practice with the help from experienced students, sometimes from the teachers. Each team will complete their tasks after school. And some excellent students can apply to participate in our research groups after some practice. All of above is helpful for their learning. Receiving new information. Embedded system has close relationship with industry. When there are huge changes in industry, they will impact on embedded system education quickly. And different universities have their own strong suits. The new information including embedded system update and progress in research should also be taught to students. Teachers cannot depict the new information in detail in limited hours in class. They can only provide a framework to

order to implement their lab assignments and group projects. Due to a constrained time frame and a diverse range of programming experience, the programming concepts necessary for completion of the lab assignments and group projects can be taught. These programming concepts should be presented in the form of six 45 minute lectures each followed by a 45 minute workshop. During the workshop, students should be given a worksheet related to the lecture material and work with one another and the teaching assistants to complete the worksheet to better understand the material. Those students who will complete the worksheets early would be given more challenging problems and will ask to help other students who will be struggling [4]. The topics of the six lectures includes, Number Systems, Variables and Functions, Libraries, Control Structures (If, Else, While, For), Bit Manipulations, and API. 4. Labs We designed the curriculum around six embedded systems labs that makes use of the students own development kits. These labs give the students a good introduction to some capabilities of how to built up our own boards and to give them ideas for their group projects. This section describes the objectives for each lab. The six lab assignments were adapted from [5] tutorials. Each lab built on concepts learned in earlier labs and introduced students to different embedded systems concepts. 1) Development kit: The objective of this assignment is to introduce students to how to make a development board of our own by a simple design [5]. 2) Interface Design: The objective of this assignment is to learn how to design an interface between board and a Personal Computer (PC). 3) Setup and Program: The objective of this assignment is to introduce the students with the keil development environment [6]. 4) Pushbutton and Lights: Students learns the design flow of a board by designing a simple project to use a push button input to control LED outputs. 5) Pushbutton Counter Implementation: The objective of this assignment is to learn how to write C code for an embedded environment and get it to run on the development board. The students have to write code to count the number of pushbutton inputs and alter the LEDs based on this count. 6) Seven Segment Display Interface Design: The objective of this assignment is to learn how to

interface a Seven Segment Display with board. Students have to code the above assignments for seven segment display. These six lab experiments provide the students with a basic understanding of some of the capabilities of their boards and a hands-on experience with simple embedded systems. The lab assignments should allows the students to become familiar with the Keil development environment and design flows to enable them to complete their projects. 5. Conclusion: Embedded system is important in industry, research and education. Because embedded system is often perceived as at the intersection of different disciplines, how to teach embedded system at universities is an enormous challenge. Many universities have proposed their solutions. These shared experiences are helpful to other universities when they design their own embedded system curricula. In this paper, we describe curricula for high school students to promote them for higher studies in embedded system. [1] Minaie, A., Sanati-Mehrizy, R. A comparison of embedded systems education in the United States, European, and Far Eastern Countries(2008) ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings [2] Winzker, M., Schwandt, A. Teaching embedded system concepts for technological literacy (2009) 2009 IEEE International Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education, MSE 2009, art. no. 5270821, pp. 89-92. [3] Hu, W., Chen, T., Shi, Q., Wang, J., Bao, N. Promoting embedded education by student technology club (2009) Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Education Technology and Computer Science, ETCS 2009, 1, art. no. 4958744, pp. 143-147. [4] Benson, B., Arfaee, A., Kim, C., Kastner, R., Gupta, R. Integrating embedded computing systems into high school and early undergraduate education (2009) 2009 IEEE International Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education, MSE 2009, art. no. 5270810, pp. 134-137 [5] M. Mazidi and J. Mazidi, The 8051 Microcontroller and Embedded System, Prentice Hall, 1999. [6] Cx51 User Guide : how to use the Keil C51 and CX51 Compilers available from Keil. Retrieved 24 Dec 2009 from http://www.keil.com/support/man/docs/c51/