Design Methods and Applications for Distributed Embedded Systems: IFIP 18th World Computer Congress, TC10 Working Conference on Distributed and ... in Information and Communication Technology)

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