This book provides a literature review of various wireless MAC protocols and techniques for achieving real-time and reliable communications in the context of cyber-physical systems (CPS). The evaluation analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 for CPS therein will give insights into configuration and optimization of critical design parameters of MAC protocols. In addition, this book also presents the design and evaluation of an adaptive MAC protocol for medical CPS, which exemplifies how to facilitate real-time and reliable communications in CPS by exploiting IEEE 802.15.4 based MAC protocols. This book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and students to better understand the QoS requirements of CPS, especially for healthcare applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems, NDES 2014, held in Albena, Bulgaria, in July 2014. The 47 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on nonlinear oscillators, circuits and electronic systems; networks and nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear phenomena in biological and physiological systems.

Embedded Software Development: The Open-Source Approach delivers a practical introduction to embedded software development, with a focus on open-source components. This programmer-centric book is written in a way that enables even novice practitioners to grasp the development process as a whole. Incorporating real code fragments and explicit, real-world open-source operating system references (in particular, FreeRTOS) throughout, the text: Defines the role and purpose of embedded systems, describing their internal structure and interfacing with software development tools Examines the inner workings of the GNU compiler collection (GCC)-based software development system or, in other words, toolchain Presents software execution models that can be adopted profitably to model and express concurrency Addresses the basic nomenclature, models, and concepts related to task-based scheduling algorithms Shows how an open-source protocol stack can be integrated in an embedded system and interfaced with other software components Analyzes the main components of the FreeRTOS Application Programming Interface (API), detailing the implementation of key operating system concepts Discusses advanced topics such as formal verification, model checking, runtime checks, memory corruption, security, and dependability Embedded Software Development: The Open-Source Approach capitalizes on the authors' extensive research on real-time operating systems and communications used in embedded applications, often carried out in strict cooperation with industry. Thus, the book serves as a springboard for further research.

The Verilog hardware description language (HDL) provides the ability to describe digital and analog systems. This ability spans the range from descriptions that express conceptual and architectural design to detailed descriptions of implementations in gates and transistors. Verilog was developed originally at Gateway Design Automation Corporation during the mid-eighties. Tools to verify designs expressed in Verilog were implemented at the same time and marketed. Now Verilog is an open standard of IEEE with the number 1364. Verilog HDL is now used universally for digital designs in ASIC, FPGA, microprocessor, DSP and many other kinds of design-centers and is supported by most of the EDA companies. The research and education that is conducted in many universities is also using Verilog. This book introduces the Verilog hardware description language and describes it in a comprehensive manner. Verilog HDL was originally developed and specified with the intent of use with a simulator. Semantics of the language had not been fully described until now. In this book, each feature of the language is described using semantic introduction, syntax and examples. Chapter 4 leads to the full semantics of the language by providing definitions of terms, and explaining data structures and algorithms. The book is written with the approach that Verilog is not only a simulation or synthesis language, or a formal method of describing design, but a complete language addressing all of these aspects. This book covers many aspects of Verilog HDL that are essential parts of any design process.

The basic concepts and building blocks for the design of Fine- (or FPGA) and Coarse-Grain Reconfigurable Architectures are discussed in this book. Recently-developed integrated architecture design and software-supported design flow of FPGA and coarse-grain reconfigurable architecture are also described.

Ever since television became practical in the early 1950s, closed-circuit television (CCTV) in conjunction with the light microscope has provided large screen display, raised image contrast, and made the images formed by ultraviolet and infrared rays visible. With the introduction of large-scale integrated circuits in the last decade, TV equipment has improved by leaps and bounds, as has its application in microscopy. With modem CCTV, sometimes with the help of digital computers, we can distill the image from a scene that appears to be nothing but noise; capture fluorescence too dim to be seen; visualize structures far below the limit of resolution; crispen images hidden in fog; measure, count, and sort objects; and record in time-lapsed and high-speed sequences through the light microscope without great difficulty. In fact, video is becoming indispensable for harnessing the fullest capacity of the light microscope, a capacity that itself is much greater than could have been envisioned just a few years ago. The time seemed ripe then to review the basics of video, and of microscopy, and to examine how the two could best be combined to accomplish these tasks. The Marine Biological Laboratory short courses on Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy in Biology, Medicine, and the Materials Sciences, and the many inquiries I received on video microscopy, supported such an effort, and Kirk Jensen of Plenum Press persuaded me of its worth.

The original motivation for the development of digital computers was to make it possible to perform calculations that were too large to be attempted by a human being without serious likelihood of error. Once the users found that they could achieve their initial aims, they then wanted to go into greater detail, and to solve still bigger problems, so that the demand for extra computing power has continued unabated, and shows no sign of slackening. This book is an attempt to describe some of the more important techniques used today, or likely to be used in the near future, to perform arithmetic within the computing machine. There are, at present, few books in this field. Most books on computer design cover the more elementary methods, and some go into detail on one or two more ambitious units. Space does not allow more. In this text the aim has been to fill this gap in the literature. In selecting the topics to be covered, there have been two main aims: first, to deal with the basic procedures of arithmetic, and then to carry on to the design of more powerful units; second, to maintain a strictly practical approach. The number of mathematical formulae has been kept to a minimum, and the more complex ones have been eliminated, since they merely serve to obscure the essential principles.

Sponsored by the International Society for Computational Methods in Engineering

In 1981 Robotics Bibliography was published containing over 1,800 references on industrial robot research and development, culled from the scientific literature over the previous 12 years. It was felt that sensors for use with industrial robots merited a section and accordingly just over 200 papers were included. It is a sign of the increased research into sensors in production engineering that this bibliography on both the contact and non-contact forms has appeared less than three years after that first comprehensive collection of references appeared. In a reviell''; in 1975 Professor Warnecke of IPA, Stuttgart drew attention to the lack of sensors for touch and vision. Since then research workers in various companies, universities and national laboratories in the USA, the UK, Italy, Germany and Japan have concentrated on improving sensor capabilities, particularly utilising vision, artificial intelligence and pattern recognition principles. As a result many research projects are on the brink of commercial exploitation and development. This biblio graphy brings together the documentation on that research and development, highlighting the advances made in vision systems, but not neglecting the development of tactile sensors of various types. No bibliography can ever be comprehensive, but significant contributions from research workers and production engineers from the major industrialised countries over the last 12 years have been included."

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to embedded systems for smart appliances and energy management, bringing together for the first time a multidisciplinary blend of topics from embedded systems, information technology and power engineering. Coverage includes challenges for future resource distribution grids, energy management in smart appliances, micro energy generation, demand response management, ultra-low power stand by, smart standby and communication networks in home and building automation.

NATO's Division of Scientific and Environmental Affairs sponsored this Advan ced Study Institute because it was felt to be timely to cover this important and challengjng subject for the first time in the framework of NATO's ASI programme. The significance of real-time systems in everyones' life is rapidly growing. The vast spectrum of these systems can be characterised by just a few examples of increasing complexity: controllers in washing machines, air traffic control systems, control and safety systems of nuclear power plants and, finally, future military systems like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The import ance of such systems for the well-being of people requires considerable efforts in research and development of highly reliable real-time systems. Furthermore, the competitiveness and prosperity of entire nations now depend on the early app lication and efficient utilisation of computer integrated manufacturing systems (CIM), of which real-time systems are an essential and decisive part. Owing to its key significance in computerised defence systems, real-time computing has also a special importance for the Alliance. The early research and development activities in this field in the 1960s and 1970s aimed towards improving the then unsatisfactory software situation. Thus, the first high-level real-time languages were defined and developed: RTL/2, Coral 66, Procol, LTR, and PEARL. In close connection with these language develop ments and with the utilisation of special purpose process control peripherals, the research on real-time operating systems advanced considerably."

No other area of biology has grown as fast and become as relevant over the last decade as virology. It is with no little amount of amaze ment, that the more we learn about fundamental biological questions and mechanisms of diseases, the more obvious it becomes that viruses perme ate all facets of our lives. While on one hand viruses are known to cause acute and chronic, mild and fatal, focal and generalized diseases, on the other hand, they are used as tools for gaining an understanding of the structure and function of higher organisms, and as vehicles for carrying protective or curative therapies. The wide scope of approaches to different biological and medical virological questions was well rep resented by the speakers that participated in this year's Symposium. While the epidemic by the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 continues to spread without hope for much relief in sight, intriguing questions and answers in the area of diagnostics, clinical manifestations and therapeutical approaches to viral infections are unveiled daily. Let us hope, that with the increasing awareness by our society of the role played by viruses, not only as causative agents of diseases, but also as models for better understanding basic biological principles, more efforts and resources are placed into their study. Luis M. de la Maza Irvine, California Ellena M."

The ever decreasing price/performance ratio of microcontrollers makes it economically attractive to replace more and more conventional mechanical or electronic control systems within many products by embedded real-time computer systems. An embedded real-time computer system is always part of a well-specified larger system, which we call an intelligent product. Although most intelligent products start out as stand-alone units, many of them are required to interact with other systems at a later stage. At present, many industries are in the middle of this transition from stand-alone products to networked embedded systems. This transition requires reflection and architecting: the complexity of the evolving distributed artifact can only be controlled if careful planning and principled design methods replace the ad-hoc engineering of the first version of many standalone embedded products.Design Methods and Applications for Distributed Embedded Systems documents recent approaches and results presented at the IFIP TC10 Working Conference on Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems (DIPES 2004), which was held in August 2004 as a co-located conference of the 18th IFIP World Computer Congress in Toulouse, France, and sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). The topics which have been chosen for this working conference are very timely: model-based design methods, design space exploration, design methodologies and user interfaces, networks and communication, scheduling and resource management, fault detection and fault tolerance, and verification and analysis. These topics are supplemented by several hardware and application oriented papers.

Analog Behavioral Modeling With The Verilog-A Language provides the IC designer with an introduction to the methodologies and uses of analog behavioral modeling with the Verilog-A language. In doing so, an overview of Verilog-A language constructs as well as applications using the language are presented. In addition, the book is accompanied by the Verilog-A Explorer IDE (Integrated Development Environment), a limited capability Verilog-A enhanced SPICE simulator for further learning and experimentation with the Verilog-A language. This book assumes a basic level of understanding of the usage of SPICE-based analog simulation and the Verilog HDL language, although any programming language background and a little determination should suffice. From the Foreword: `Verilog-A is a new hardware design language (HDL) for analog circuit and systems design. Since the mid-eighties, Verilog HDL has been used extensively in the design and verification of digital systems. However, there have been no analogous high-level languages available for analog and mixed-signal circuits and systems. Verilog-A provides a new dimension of design and simulation capability for analog electronic systems. Previously, analog simulation has been based upon the SPICE circuit simulator or some derivative of it. Digital simulation is primarily performed with a hardware description language such as Verilog, which is popular since it is easy to learn and use. Making Verilog more worthwhile is the fact that several tools exist in the industry that complement and extend Verilog's capabilities ... Behavioral Modeling With the Verilog-A Language provides a good introduction and starting place for students and practicing engineers with interest in understanding this new level of simulation technology. This book contains numerous examples that enhance the text material and provide a helpful learning tool for the reader. The text and the simulation program included can be used for individual study or in a classroom environment ...' Dr. Thomas A. DeMassa, Professor of Engineering, Arizona State University

The Verilog Hardware Description Language (Verilog-HDL) has long been the most popular language for describing complex digital hardware. It started life as a prop- etary language but was donated by Cadence Design Systems to the design community to serve as the basis of an open standard. That standard was formalized in 1995 by the IEEE in standard 1364-1995. About that same time a group named Analog Verilog International formed with the intent of proposing extensions to Verilog to support analog and mixed-signal simulation. The first fruits of the labor of that group became available in 1996 when the language definition of Verilog-A was released. Verilog-A was not intended to work directly with Verilog-HDL. Rather it was a language with Similar syntax and related semantics that was intended to model analog systems and be compatible with SPICE-class circuit simulation engines. The first implementation of Verilog-A soon followed: a version from Cadence that ran on their Spectre circuit simulator. As more implementations of Verilog-A became available, the group defining the a- log and mixed-signal extensions to Verilog continued their work, releasing the defi- tion of Verilog-AMS in 2000. Verilog-AMS combines both Verilog-HDL and Verilog-A, and adds additional mixed-signal constructs, providing a hardware description language suitable for analog, digital, and mixed-signal systems. Again, Cadence was first to release an implementation of this new language, in a product named AMS Designer that combines their Verilog and Spectre simulation engines.

Control system design is a challenging task for practicing engineers. It requires knowledge of different engineering fields, a good understanding of technical specifications and good communication skills. The current book introduces the reader into practical control system design, bridging the gap between theory and practice. The control design techniques presented in the book are all model based., considering the needs and possibilities of practicing engineers. Classical control design techniques are reviewed and methods are presented how to verify the robustness of the design. It is how the designed control algorithm can be implemented in real-time and tested, fulfilling different safety requirements. Good design practices and the systematic software development process are emphasized in the book according to the generic standard IEC61508. The book is mainly addressed to practicing control and embedded software engineers - working in research and development - as well as graduate students who are faced with the challenge to design control systems and implement them in real-time.

Communication protocols are rules whereby meaningful communication can be exchanged between different communicating entities. In general, they are complex and difficult to design and implement. Specifications of communication protocols written in a natural language (e.g. English) can be unclear or ambiguous, and may be subject to different interpretations. As a result, independent implementations of the same protocol may be incompatible. In addition, the complexity of protocols make them very hard to analyze in an informal way. There is, therefore, a need for precise and unambiguous specification using some formal languages. Many protocol implementations used in the field have almost suffered from failures, such as deadlocks. When the conditions in which the protocols work correctly have been changed, there has been no general method available for determining how they will work under the new conditions. It is necessary for protocol designers to have techniques and tools to detect errors in the early phase of design, because the later in the process that a fault is discovered, the greater the cost of rectifying it. Protocol verification is a process of checking whether the interactions of protocol entities, according to the protocol specification, do indeed satisfy certain properties or conditions which may be either general (e.g., absence of deadlock) or specific to the particular protocol system directly derived from the specification. In the 80s, an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) working group began a programme of work to develop formal languages which were suitable for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). This group called such languages Formal Description Techniques (FDTs). Some of the objectives of ISO in developing FDTs were: enabling unambiguous, clear and precise descriptions of OSI protocol standards to be written, and allowing such specifications to be verified for correctness. There are two FDTs standardized by ISO: LOTOS and Estelle. Communication Protocol Specification and Verification is written to address the two issues discussed above: the needs to specify a protocol using an FDT and to verify its correctness in order to uncover specification errors in the early stage of a protocol development process. The readership primarily consists of advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students, communication software developers, telecommunication engineers, EDP managers, researchers and software engineers. It is intended as an advanced undergraduate or postgraduate textbook, and a reference for communication protocol professionals.

The proliferation and growth of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) has spawned many diverse and interesting technologies. One of the most prominent of these technologies is the VHSIC Hardware Description Language, or VHDL. VHDL permits designers of digital modules, components, systems, and even networks to describe their designs both structurally and behaviorally. VHDL also allows simulation of the designs in order to investigate their performance prior to actually implementing them in hardware. Having gained the ability to simulate designs once encoded in VHDL, designers were naturally confronted with the issue of testing these designs. VHDL did not explicitly address the requirement to insert particular digital waveforms, often termed test vectors or patterns, or to subsequently assess the correctness of the response from some digital entity. In a distributed design environment, or even in an isolated one where the design was subject to review or scrutiny by another organization, de-facto methods of testing and evaluating results proved faulty. The reason was a lack of standardization.When organization A designed a circuit and tested it with their self-developed test tools it had a certain behavior. When it was delivered to organization B and B tested it using their test tools, the behavior was different. Was the fault in the circuit, in A's tools, or in B's tools? The only way to resolve this was for both organizations to agree on a test apparatus, validate its correctness and use it consistently. While VHDL was an IEEE standard language, and consistency among myriad designers was fairly well guaranteed, no such standard existed for test waveform generation and assessment. Hence, the value of standardization in the design language was being negated by the lack of such a standard for testing. The Waveform and Vector Exchange Specification, or WAVES, was conceived and designed to solve this testing problem -- and it has. Being both a subset of VHDL itself, as well as an IEEE standard, it guarantees both conformity among multiple applications and easy integration with VHDL units under test (UUTs). Using WAVES and VHDL for Effective Design and Testing will serve many purposes.For the WAVES beginner, its tutorial will make the application of WAVES in typical, standard usage straightforward and convenient. For the more advanced user, the advanced topics will provide insight into the nuances of these useful capabilities. For all users, the tools, templates and examples given in the chapters, as well as on the companion disk, will provide a practical starting foundation for using WAVES and VHDL.

Verilog(R) Quickstart is a basic, practical, introductory textbook for professionals and students alike. This book explains how a designer can be more effective through the use of the Verilog hardware description language to simulate and document a design. By understanding simulation, a designer can simulate a design to see if a design works before it is built. This gives the designer an opportunity to try different ideas. Documentation allows a designer to maintain and reuse a design more easily. Verilog's intrinsic hierarchical modularity enables the designer to easily reuse portions of the design as 'intellectual property' or 'macro-cells'. Verilog(R) Quickstart presents some of the formal Verilog syntax and definitions and then shows practical uses. This book does not oversimplify the Verilog language nor does it emphasize theory. Verilog(R) Quickstart has over 100 examples that are used to illustrate aspects of the language. In the later chapters the focus is on working with modeling style and explaining why and when one would use different elements of the language. Another feature of the book is the chapter on state machine modeling.There is also a chapter on test benches and testing strategy as well as a chapter on debugging. Verilog(R) Quickstart is designed to teach the Verilog language, to show the designer how to model in Verilog and to explain the basics of using Verilog simulators.

A Guide to VHDL is intended for the working engineer who needs to develop, document, simulate and synthesize a design using the VHDL language. It is for system and chip designers who are working with VHDL CAD tools, and who have some experience programming in Fortran, Pascal, or C and have used a logic simulator. A Guide to VHDL includes a number of paper exercises and computer lab experiments. If a compiler/simulator is available to the reader, then the lab exercises invluded in the chapters can be run to reinforce the learning experience. For practical purposes, this book keeps simulator-specific text to a minimum, but does use the Synopsys VHDL Simulator command language in a few cases. A Guide to VHDL can be used as a primer, since its contents are appropriate for an introductory course in VHDL.

Principles of Verifiable RTL Design: A Functional Coding Style Supporting Verification Processes in Verilog explains how you can write Verilog to describe chip designs at the RT-level in a manner that cooperates with verification processes. This cooperation can return an order of magnitude improvement in performance and capacity from tools such as simulation and equivalence checkers. It reduces the labor costs of coverage and formal model checking by facilitating communication between the design engineer and the verification engineer. It also orients the RTL style to provide more useful results from the overall verification process. The intended audience for Principles of Verifiable RTL Design: A Functional Coding Style Supporting Verification Processes in Verilog is engineers and students who need an introduction to various design verification processes and a supporting functional Verilog RTL coding style. A second intended audience is engineers who have been through introductory training in Verilog and now want to develop good RTL writing practices for verification. A third audience is Verilog language instructors who are using a general text on Verilog as the course textbook but want to enrich their lectures with an emphasis on verification. A fourth audience is engineers with substantial Verilog experience who want to improve their Verilog practice to work better with RTL Verilog verification tools. A fifth audience is design consultants searching for proven verification-centric methodologies. A sixth audience is EDA verification tool implementers who want some suggestions about a minimal Verilog verification subset. Principles of Verifiable RTL Design: A Functional Coding Style Supporting Verification Processes in Verilog is based on the reality that comes from actual large-scale product design process and tool experience.

Physicians, lawyers, engineers, architects, financial analysts, and other pro fessionals articulate an increasing need for support by intelligent workstations for decision making, analysis, communication, and other activities. "Intelligent Workstations for Professionals" is the collection of papers presented by inter national scientists at a symposium and workshop in March 1992. Requirements from potential users, studies of their behavior as well as approaches and aspects oftechnical realizations of "intelligent" functions are introduced. Eight contributions from members of the Center for Information and Tele communication Technology (Clrn of Northwestern University, Wisconsin Whitewater University, and the Children's Memorial Hospital deal with the latest findings of the UNIS (Users' Needs for Intelligent Systems) project, which is designed to identify needs and wishes from professionals for intelligent sup port systems and the potential barriers to adoption and use of such systems. The remaining papers concentrate on new approaches and techniques that en hance the "intelligence" of future workstations. They tackle issues like architectural trends in workstation design, the combination of workstations with HDTV and speech processing, automatic reading and understanding of documents, the automated development of software, or the processing of in exact knowledge. These papers were contributed by members of the DFKI GmbH (German Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence), GMD mbH (German Society for Mathematics and Data Processing), Siemens Gammasonics Inc., Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG and Siemens AG."

th This volume gathers together the technical papers presented at the 8 European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), held in Helsinki Finland. ECSCW is an international forum for multidisciplinary research covering the technical, empirical, and theoretical aspects of collaboration and computer systems. The 20 papers presented here have been selected via a rigorous reviewing process from 110 submissions. Both the number of submissions and the quality of the selected papers are testimony to the diversity and energy of the CSCW community. We trust that you will find the papers interesting and that they will serve to stimulate further quality work within the community. The technical papers are complemented by a wider set of activities at ECSCW 2003, including tutorials, workshops, demonstrations, videos, posters and a doctoral colloquium. Together these provide rich opportunities for discussion, learning and exploration of the more recent and novel issues in the field. This conference could not have taken place without considerable enthusiasm, support and participation, not to mention the hard work of a number of people. In particular, we would like to thank the following: * The authors, representing over 17 countries and 97 institutions, who submitted a paper. So many submissions of such high quality are the basis of a good conference. * The members of the program committee who so diligently reviewed and discussed papers. Their collective decisions result in a good scientific program and their feedback to authors strengthens the work of the community.