Embedded Software Engineering

Software Development

Network Protocol Stacks Embedded Software Development Device Driver Development Network Application Software

Embedded Software is a primary area of focus at Polaris Networks. Our software engineering team has many years of experience in developing, testing and supporting embedded systems that have stringent performance, stability, code footprint, memory consumption and processor utilization constraints. Our engineers possess an in-depth knowledge of different processors, operating systems, bus architectures, peripheral and network interfaces and development toolsets that are commonly used for embedded systems.

Polaris Networks provides the following services in the Embedded Software area:

Board Support Packages for the processors listed below
Device Drivers for various peripheral and networking interfaces
Applications
Graphical and Command Line Interfaces
System Integration
Porting across Operating Systems listed below
Testing, Quality Assurance and Certification

Our software engineering team has in-depth expertise in the following hardware architectures and technologies:

Processors	ARM7, ARM9, ARM11, TI DSPs, ADI DSPs, PowerPC, XScale, Intel CPU & Chipsets, Atmel AVR32, LEON2
Operating Systems	VxWorks, Linux, eCos, Windows CE, Windows XP Embedded, RTXC
Bus Architectures	ISA, VME, PCI, PCI-X, CompactPCI, PMC, PCI Express
Peripheral and Network Interfaces	Ethernet, USB 2.0, I2C, SPI, 802.11, GPS, Bluetooth, IrDA
Multimedia	Digital Audio (S/PDIF, MIDI, CD-ROM, FM/AM, Dolby, AC 97, I2S), Touch screens

Case Studies

Real-time Asset Tracking in an Aluminum Processing Plant using Active RFID Tags

The goal of this project was develop a real-time system to track, locate and monitor the Ladles and Mobile Transport Vehicles (MTV) scattered around an aluminum processing plant. The tagged objects are tracked on floor plans or layouts that are fully-customizable by the customer.

IEEE 802.15.4-based Active RFID tags are used to form a wireless network and track the tagged items. The central server keeps a log and maintains statistics of the tagged items, such as the frequency of usage based on the changes in the location of the tagged item. The server keeps a real-time inventory of the total ladles and MTVs inside the plant. The software generates various reports based on daily data and can be used to locate a particular tagged object. The central server can be programmed to monitor one or more tagged objects constantly and raise alarms if the objects are moved to or from a particular area.

In this project, geographically-distributed areas of the plant were included in the tracking system using the Ethernet LAN in the plant. Dual-interface readers are used to gather the tag data for a particular section of the plant using the 802.15.4 wireless interface and then transfer the accumulated data to the central server over the LAN.

Porting of audio device LCD display software from RTXC to Windows OS

This project involved a hand-held audio device for playing MP3 audio. The audio device is based on the ARM7 TDMI core microprocessor and includes an LCD display and keypad. Our team ported the embedded software for the LCD display and keypad that was based on an RTXC kernel to Windows XP Embedded. We also added new GUI components and were responsible for coding, debugging and testing the complete software.