Abstract

In contrast to general-purpose computers, an embedded system has a special function for a special purpose. Nowadays, embedded products play an important role in daily life, and they are widely used almost everywhere, such as in GPS, mobile phones, digital TV, transportation systems, computer systems in aircraft, computer systems in vehicles.
Despite its popularity, the development process for embedded products is usually very complicated and thus very often results in over time (development time), or in over-budget (cost) or a lack of expected product specifications. Therefore, it is necessary to use an appropriate prescriptive method or design methodology to guide a designer in the design process.
The objective of the present thesis is to introduce a new approach to embedded system engineering to implement a new embedded product design. A rich working experience in industry suggests that there is a need for such work. Compared to the traditional approach, which uses product-based or process-based design analysis, the proposed approach uses environment-based design (EBD) methodology for the whole embedded system development life cycle, which may be a systematic procedure aimed to help designers during embedded product development. To better illustrate the application of the proposed design approach to embedded system engineering, an original example of an embedded ARM Linux system is used as a case study in the present thesis.