Development of Linux based embedded platform and applications

• Main Author: Leung, Ki Chi.
• Other Authors: Vun Chan Hua, Nicholas
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computer systems organization::Processor architectures
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/16933
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

While ARM microcontroller is undeniably the leading microcontroller in today’s consumer electronics market, open source software like Linux is also increasingly being used in embedded systems, and is found to especially complement well with ARM-based embedded platform. The main objective of this project is to port the latest Linux 2.6 kernel for an ARM9 processor-based embedded system that is developed earlier by previous SCE students. The first phase of the project involves the understanding of Linux Kernel compilation proc-ess. Investigations and experimentation on kernel porting process are then performed, where the Buildroot tool is found to be the most effective approach and is used to successfully pro-duce a Linux kernel and root file system that can work with the ARM9 board. The second phase of the project concentrates on integration of device drivers for various devices added to the ARM embedded platform. These include a USB based wireless LAN adap-tor and a SD Card. This report summarises the hardware and software setup of the project, lists what we have achieved so far, and presents the various difficulties encountered, the steps taken to overcome them, and the remaining tasks to be done.