Abstract
The area of Embedded Systems Design has undergone tremendous growth in recent years. A major contributor of this growth has been the addition of networking technologies, database management systems, and operating systems to embedded systems. Embedded systems have application in many areas such as automotive/transportation, government/military, medical equipment, telecommunications, avionics/aeronautics, aerospace electronics, office automation, data-communication, industrial automation, and consumer electronics.
The remarkable growth in embedded computing has given rise to a demand for engineers and computer scientists with experience in designing and implementing embedded systems. Embedded system design is currently not yet well represented in academic programs. Most computer engineering programs teach programming and design skills that are appropriate for general-purpose computer operating under the control of a commercial operating system rather than for more specialized embedded systems.
In order to prepare our computer engineering students for the embedded systems design experience, we offer two courses on embedded systems. However, these two courses on embedded systems design are not sufficient to teach the students the skills that they need. In order to satisfy the ABET requirements students in computer engineering program are required to take a capstone course. The projects that students do in this capstone course are embedded projects. This paper will describe some of the embedded projects that the students have done in this capstone course.
Dennis Njeru is a software engineer in research at Novarad Corporation, where he works on developing innovative medical image analysis software. He received his B.S in Computer Engineering from Utah Valley University. His research interests include image registration, tissue segmentation, functional MRI, and diffusion tensor imaging.
Afsaneh Minaie is a Professor and Chair of Engineering Department at Utah Valley University. She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. all in Electrical Engineering from University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include gender issues in the academic sciences and engineering fields, Embedded Systems Design, Mobile Computing, Wireless Sensor Networks, Nanotechnology, Data Mining and Databases.
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