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Abstract

Today, embedded systems and embedded networking are common in manufacturing, complex vehicles, medical equipment, and home appliances, but few undergraduate engineering and technology curricula teach courses devoted to real-time embedded systems networking. Not having appropriate educational experiences risks a decline in U.S. technical expertise. Various companies such as Vector Corporation and Dearborn Group have developed commercial software packages for analysis, diagnosis and simulation of real-time embedded systems networking protocols. These companies also offer short training courses in embedded systems networking. The intended audiences of these training courses are the experienced engineers working in the industry but not the inexperienced undergraduate students. Although the commercial software packages are very complex and time consuming for the students to learn on their own, they can be taught (delivered) to the students in a simple way. This can be done by focusing on the major components that are considered the base to build any real-time embedded systems network. In this paper, we present an instructional material for CAN Open Environment (CANoe) software. This software can be used to develop, test, and simulate CAN networks. The instructional material basically summarizes the main components that are needed to build CANoe application in five labs. These labs represent the major phases in the CANoe application development cycle. Students, after learning this material, can move forward to develop more sophisticated applications on their own. We have also done assessment analysis for student learning. Based on our analysis it is concluded that our semester-long teaching and hands-on laboratory exercises greatly enhanced student learning. Detailed descriptions of our teaching materials along with our teaching methodologies are presented in the paper. The paper also presents the assessment of student learning. Our work may motivate other instructors around the country to develop similar courses to teaching real-time embedded systems networking.

Introduction

We are living in a world today in which rapid technological change is occurring faster than even our universities can keep up with. If we look back 50 years, we see an automobile industry in which almost all systems are mechanically based. Fast-forward to today, and industry projections are showing that by 2010, 40% of the total cost of a car will be dedicated to electronics and distributed electronic control systems. During this time span, individual manufacturers have developed their own processes and their own proprietary electronic architectures and protocols. Many of these standards did not make it out of their company’s doors, but we finally have a situation where certain protocols are used globally. This global industry standardization did not come about until around 10 years ago. After a decade of preferred usage across Europe, Bosch’s CAN protocol [1] finally won widespread acceptance in the US auto industry during the late 1990s. Worldwide usage brings certain advantages with it. Standardization of components drives down manufacturing costs; it also reduces maintenance costs when replacements are easy to obtain. In addition, auto mechanics and repair personnel only have to learn one electronics communication protocol to diagnose and repair faulty systems. In this entire situation, the only weak link is the educational system.

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Rawashdeh, Z., & Mahmud, S. M. (2009, June), Teaching Real Time Embedded Systems Networking And Assessment Of Student Learning Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5837