This book serves as a practical guide for practicing engineers who need to design embedded systems for high-speed data acquisition and control systems. A minimum amount of theory is presented, along with a review of analog and digital electronics, followed by detailed explanations of essential topics in hardware design and software development. The discussion of hardware focuses on microcontroller design (ARM microcontrollers and FPGAs), techniques of embedded design, high speed data acquisition (DAQ) and control systems. Coverage of software development includes main programming techniques, culminating in the study of real-time operating systems. All concepts are introduced in a manner to be highly-accessible to practicing engineers and lead to the practical implementation of an embedded board that can be used in various industrial fields as a control system and high speed data acquisition system.

Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio is a Ph.D. in Physics and a Telecommunication Engineer. He has worked on various international projects in the field of gravitational wave research. Working as a software developer in the data acquisition system, he participated as the designer of the thermal compensation system (TCS) for the optical system used in the Virgo Experiment (an experiment for detection of the gravitational wave). Di Paolo Emilio is also the author of numerous publications on electronics design, data acquisition system via GSM, power supply and photovoltaic system.