CAREER: Integrating Control, Computation, and Communication - A Design Automation Flow for Distributed Embedded Systems

半导体电路、无线网络和微电子机械系统(MEMS)等使能技术的稳步发展使复杂的分布式(联网)嵌入式系统的设计成为可能，预计这些系统将有利于公共基础设施、工业自动化、汽车工业和消费电子等重要应用领域。然而，许多这样的系统的异构性和分布式特性要求设计团队具有跨越自动控制、通信网络和硬件/软件计算系统的多方面技能集。计算机辅助设计是一个传统的跨学科研究领域，它有助于使这些系统可行，并提高设计过程的生产率。NSF的这项职业研究正在开发新的建模技术、优化算法、通信协议和接口流程，这些技术结合在一起，为分布式嵌入式控制应用程序产生了一个新的设计自动化流程，这些应用程序必须依赖于网络通信，例如汽车“X-by-wire系统”和集成建筑。目标是简化这些系统的集成设计和验证，并促进具有不同专业知识的工程师之间的合作。研究贡献包括用于实时嵌入式软件的稳健部署的新方法，以及用于在平衡通信和计算资源的使用的同时满足性能要求的分布式实现的综合方法。与之配套的教育项目基于这样一种信念，即学术课程需要更新，以克服电气工程和计算机科学等学科之间的历史和人为界限，这些学科是嵌入式计算的核心。

Steady advances in enabling technologies such as semiconductor circuits, wireless networking, and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are making possible the design of complex distributed (networked) embedded systems which are expected to benefit important application areas such as public infrastructure, industrial automation, automotive industry, and consumer electronics. However, the heterogeneous and distributed nature of many such systems requires design teams with a multifaceted set of skills spanning automatic control, communication networks, and hardware/software computational systems. Computer-aided design, a traditionally interdisciplinary research area, is instrumental in making these systems feasible and in enhancing the productivity of the design process. This NSF CAREER research is developing new modeling techniques, optimization algorithms, communication protocols, and interface processes that combined yield a novel design automation flow for distributed embedded-control applications that must depend on networked communication, such as automotive "X-by-wire systems" and integrated buildings. The goal is both to simplify the integrated design and validation of these systems and to foster collaboration among engineers with different expertise. Research contributions include new methods for the robust deployment of real-time embedded software and for the synthesis of distributed implementations that meet performance requirements while balancing the usage of communication and computational resources. The companion educational program is founded on the belief that the academic curriculum needs to be updated in order to overcome the historical and artificial boundaries among those disciplines in electrical engineering and computer science that lie at the core of embedded computing.