Embedded & Mobile

Strategic vision

Embedded systems address a wide range of products and markets, from entertainment, security and encryption devices to industrial process control and monitoring, including aerospace.

With the fast development of wireless technologies, embedded devices are now mobile and communicating.

The upcoming evolution is based on the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm: a large network of pervasive devices with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables objects to collect and exchange data.

Each embedded system has to fulfil specific requirements but most designs involve a delicate trade-off between a set of disciplines (hardware, software, mechanics, thermics…). Environmental and regulations’ requirements are also key elements that influence the solution and the design. The system also has to be intuitive, pervasive and ergonomic.

The mastership of a wide range of CPUs, microcontrollers, FPGAs, sensors, communications standards… is mandatory to find the right balance between power consumption, computation power, and complexity of the application.

The strength of DELTATEC is its ability to handle all these disciplines internally to achieve efficient designs in terms of system requirements and constraints.

So an embedded system cannot be reduced to a question of embedded software.

Tools/methods

One major challenge for the embedded software team is to define and implement the right link between the software applicative layer and the embedded system hardware. DELTATEC has the tools, the knowhow and the methods required to provide device drivers either for high-level operating systems like Windows, Linux or OSx, but also for smaller RTOS like RTEMS.

The hardware abstraction layer API is the usual key point to split an embedded software development between different skilled developers or, typically, between the platform provider and the customer who most often develops the top-level application...

DELTATEC methodologies are continuously adapted and refined: agile and test driven development, hardware/firmware/software co-design, design for manufacturability and testability, vertical and horizontal integration, simulation, fast prototyping, V-model development process…

The security aspects and product compliance to international standards take part of process since the early design steps. If required, design and manufacturing process is compatible with demanding normative environment such ESA ECSS. It is tailored on case-by-case basis to provide the best trade-off between development quality, time to market and implementation cost. Software follows valuable state-of-the-art development approach such as coding guidelines like MISRA-C/C++.

Mobile technology is the actual technological wave and will progressively touch every embedded system. The Internet of Things development even raises the interest to a world where every object is connected.

DELTATEC has an important R&D activity in these fields and already supports:

• Standard wired link: USB, CAN, Modbus, SPI…
• Wireless: WiFi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, EDGE/3G…

Knowledge of mobile development is not only a question of understanding the development tools and communication standards, but also the knowledge of application deployment and security topics. DELTATEC actively supports modern mobile platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Phone.