CSE477 Syllabus

Catalog Data

CSE 477 Digital System Design (4) Students use the laboratory to design, simulate, construct, and debug a substantial project that includes hardware, software, and communication components. Lectures focus on use of embedded processors in digital system design and interfacing techniques. Writing and debugging of real-time reactive software emphasized.
Prerequistes: CSE378 and CSE467.

Course Goals

1. To serve as a capstone design course to tie together the computer engineering curriculum via the design of a complete embedded system involving hardware, software, and communication components.
2. Understanding of basic microcontrollers and their use in embedded system design.
3. To gain appreciation for the software issues in embedded system code.
4. Familiarity with basic serial and parallel communication methods.
5. To experience the development of a complete product from design to implementation and debugging.
6. To present design goals and decisions as well as implementation results in both verbal presentation and written documentation.

Course Syllabus

1. Introduction to digital system design
2. Microprocessors and microcontrollers
   • Review of basic computer organization
   • Address/data bus
   • Memories
   • I/O ports
   • Timing subsystems
   • Interrupt handling
3. Interfacing techniques
   • Basic I/O ports
   • Interactions involving time
   • Memories
   • Interface support devices
   • Polling
   • Interrupts and interrupt handling
4. Communication methods
   • Serial
   • Parallel
   • Basic wireless schemes
   • Error correction
   • Flow control
5. Microcontroller software issues
   • Interrupt handling
   • Device drivers
   • Multi-tasking
   • Operating systems for embedded applications
6. Design experiences
   • Case studies of previous projects
   • Industry perspectives
   • Research directions

Project

The main emphasis in this course is the design, construction and documentation of a substantial project which will need to be demonstrated by March 20. The project report and possible projects will be discussed during the first week and students will be asked to find project partners and choose a project during the second week.

In previous editions of CSE477, students were more or less free to work on projects of their own choosing (in consultation with the instructor). This time, we'll be restricting the domain of the projects so that we can design a collection of devices that can work together to demonstrate the future of task-specific computing in wearable and pocketable devices, appliances for the home and office, and accessories for automobiles.