DSP Software Development Techniques for Embedded and Real-Time Systems

2

Overview of Embedded Systems and Real-Time Systems

Introduction

Nearly all real-world DSP applications are part of an embedded real-time system. While this book will focus primarily on the DSP-specific portion of such a system, it would be naive to pretend that the DSP portions can be implemented without concern for the real-time nature of DSP or the embedded nature of the entire system.

This chapter will highlight some of special design considerations that apply to embedded real-time systems. I will look first at real-time issues, then some specific embedded issues, and finally, at trends and issues that commonly apply to both realtime and embedded systems.

Real-Time Systems

A real-time system is a system that is required to react to stimuli ...