Teaching Embedded Systems in Biomedical Engineering degrees: A case study

Embedded systems play a major role in the development of future biomedical devices. Teaching embedded systems in degrees that are not completely focused on electronics is a challenge. It is common that the students perceive courses such as Digital Electronics and Embedded Systems as difficult and disconnected with other subjects as Programming and Signal Processing. A way to alleviate this situation and to improve the learning process is to see embedded systems as a means to integrate concepts from Signal Processing, Computer Programming and Electronics, as well as the practical aspect of the implementation of actual medical devices. In this paper, an example of the design of a course on embedded systems is presented. It allows securing concepts such as sampling theory, digital filtering, concurrency, real-time programming, etc., without sacrificing the technical basis of embedded systems: CPU architecture, low-level programming, interrupts, interaction with peripherals, etc. Also, implementation techniques such as fixed-point design can be covered. A real-time heart beat detection systems is presented as a case study.