A Student Experiment Method for Embedded System Education Based on Incremental Upgrade

The applications of embedded systems are widespread not only in consumer products and industrial machines but also for ubiquitous or sensor networking. However, the number of embedded system engineers is small and a few universities in Japan offer education pertaining to embedded systems. Embedded system engineers should acquire both the hardware (HW) and software (SW) technologies. We propose an educational method using student experiments to train embedded SW engineers who understand HW technologies. The experiments are related to developing SW, designing FPGA devices and learning HW/SW co-design. By conducting these experiments, students learn system modeling, HW/SW trade-off and development of SW and HW modules. We developed a JPEG encoder experiment using HW/SW co-design for evaluation.