Interrupt Driven RS-232, Pulse Width Modulation, and Control Processing on a Single 8-bit PIC Chip

Abstract

Autopilots utilizing a single processor allow for smaller, lighter, more cost-effective designs than those using multi-processor architecture. Presented here is a software architecture that allows multiple tasks to operate in a real-time mutually exclusive environment using a single 8-bit processor. This type of architecture will be utilized to create an autopilot using a single processor and sensors. The problem is preventing individual tasks from interfering with one another in a real-time environment. The processor selected for this design is the 8-bit microchip programmable integrated circuit (PIC) 18F2420. Hardware limitations on the microchip PIC, such as a lack of symmetric multi-processing, must be emulated in a round-robin interrupt scheduler whereby each task runs in sequence, receiving only a slice of the total processing time available.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2009
Accession Number
ADA500061

Entities

People

  • Justin Shumarker

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Automatic Pilots
  • Circuits
  • Control Systems
  • Electronics
  • Environment
  • Field Programmable Gate Arrays
  • Global Positioning Systems
  • Inertial Measurement Units
  • Instructions
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Latitude
  • Load Monitoring
  • Longitude
  • Military Research
  • Modulation
  • Parallel Computing
  • Parallel Processing

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Robotics and Automation.