Distributed Embedded Control Systems

Concepts.- Real-time Characteristics and Safety of Embedded Systems.- Multitasking.- Hardware and System Architectures.- Programming of Embedded Systems.- Implementation.- Hardware Platform.- Implementation of a Fault-tolerant Distributed Embedded System.- Asynchronous Real-time Execution with Runtime State Restoration.- Epilogue.

Professor Colnaric has been involved in real-time research for more than fifteen years. Before that, he worked on practical industrial projects mainly designing embedded operating system kernels and other system software. Most of his research papers, co-authored with Professor Halang, have been practically oriented and some were published in Control Engineering Practice, Real-Time Systems and Annual Reviews in Control. Their book chapters have been published by Kluwer and World Scientific. Following work in the late 90s in embedded computer systems in process control and mechatronic systems he wrote a textbook on digital systems in computing (in Slovene) which is being used in the undergraduate programme of computer science at the University of Maribor. He has authored or co-authored about eighty peer-reviewed contributions to conferences.

Professor Colnaric founded and is the current chairman of the Real-Time Systems Laboratory at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He teaches courses in real-time systems, digital systems, microprocessors, and data structures and algorithms.

Beginning in 1994, he has led several scientific projects financed by Slovenian Government. In the years 2002-2005 his group participated in a 5th FW European project IFATIS dealing with intelligent fault tolerant control, designing and building a distributed embedded platform.

Matjaz Colnaric is a member of IFAC and active in its Technical Committee 3.1: Computers and Control. He is one of the four working group leaders, concerned with safety issues. He was a programme committee member for many years, and in the last two years has been the chairman of the IFAC/IFIP/IEEE Workshop on Real-Time Programming, the longest-standing conference in this area (29 years).

Professor Colnaric is one of the Editors of the journal Computing and Information Technology published by the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and is an editorial board member of

From the reviews: "This book is written for designers and engineers working with embedded systems in an industrial environment as well as for researchers interested in distributed control systems, real-time architectures, programming languages, and fault tolerance." (IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Vol. 30, February, 2010)