RTOS Control of Hardware Processes

In this thesis, adding hardware-process support to Microcontroller Real-time Operating System Version 2 (MicroC/OS-II) is proposed. MicroC/OS-II is a hard real-time operating system (RTOS), mostly written in the C programming language. MicroC/OS-II is designed to manage limited resources within embedded systems, and it can only execute and control software processes performed in the same processor system. MicroC/OS-II has been modified in order to manage external hardware processes. These hardware processes are implemented on a Nexys 3 Spartan-6 FPGA Board. In this thesis, MicroC/OS-II is already ported to run on an EVBplus HCS12 development board with CodeWarrior Embedded Software Development Tools from Freescale Semiconductor Inc. Modifications are applied on MicroC/OS-II interrupt system to manage hardware processes, and SPI protocol and parallel interface are set up to communicate between the HCS12 trainer and the FPGA board. The work is illustrated by designing a satellite attitude controller, using variable structure control (VSC).