Exploring the Design Space for Network Protocol Stacks on Special - Purpose Embedded Systems

Many special-purpose embedded systems such as automobiles and aircrafts consist of multiple embedded controllers connected through embedded network interconnect. Such network interconnects have particular characteristics and thus have different communication requirements. Accordingly, the authors need to frequently implement new protocol stacks for embedded systems. Implementing new protocol stacks on embedded systems has significant design space but it has not been explored in detail. In this paper, they aim to explore the design space of network protocol stacks for special-purpose embedded systems. They survey several design choices very carefully so that they can choose the best design for a given network with respect to performance, portability, complexity, and flexibility.