Bridging The Gap With Slip
Arlen Planting, Sin Ming Loo · 2020
Many embedded system projects make use of some type of serial communications in order to transmit data packets between devices.The choice of methods to manage transmission and receiving of data is critical, and small systems are no exception.Communications of this type can be troublesome without borrowing techniques from other disciplines.However, one very important criterion is that the protocol must be lightweight.If the interface evolves from a "Hello world" message displayed on HyperTerminal to a full-blown data packet-passing system, chances are that the code is overly complex and difficult to keep running reliably.Techniques borrowed from internet protocols can help send messages reliably between two devices less than an inch apart with less effort than one might assume.Since most Electrical and Computer Engineering students may not have been exposed to extensive computer science courses on data structures or network protocols (usually elective courses), a few topics could be borrowed from these areas for a crash course before embedded systems are introduced.This paper presents the foundation for a crash course that we have researched and developed.The topics will include circular queues (ring buffer) from data structures and SLIP protocol from network protocols, which will provide compact, efficient and reliable solutions for many student projects.We have also tested the techniques presented in this paper in our FAA Airliner Cabin Environment Research sensor network prototype.