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Principal Sponsors:
 | Embedded Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) Solutions |
3. The Embedded Environment
As described in the introduction, an embedded TMN agent is a management
application that runs within a RTOS. This
environment is commonly referred to as an embedded system and primarily
indicates an environment in which applications can be configured to execute in a
determined period of time and amount of memory.
An attractive aspect of an RTOS for telecommunications equipment, beyond
its performance characteristics, is the cost. This type of system is
usually packaged as a development platform along with compilers and
debugging tools used for developing the RTOS–based applications. While
this development package may be fairly expensive, the cost of license fees
for deploying the RTOS itself, along with any developed applications, is
very low when purchased in medium to high volumes.
Embedded applications, such as TMN agents, may be designed and/or
configured to use a variety of memory resources. Although embedded
environments can include a local disk drive, many do not. It is therefore
common for the core application to be stored in read-only memory (ROM) and
then loaded into random-access memory (RAM) for execution, because RAM
typically provides much faster execution times. Some sort of non-volatile
RAM (NVRAM), like flash memory, is used for storage of configuration
parameters or variables that must be stored during the operation of the
application in case of a re-start.
Because the volume of systems deployed using an embedded environment is
usually high, equipment manufacturers strive to minimize the amount of
memory of each type that is required for their applications, including the
TMN agent. Often these systems will require no more than 32 Mbytes of RAM
and may be as low as 8 Mbytes.
These characteristics make embedded systems ideal for use in
application-specific telecommunications equipment that is deployed in high
volumes and has rigid performance requirements. Although this is appealing
to equipment manufacturers, it presents unique challenges for software
developers. It is therefore critical that vendors who supply
communications software and agent development tools for the embedded
environment are well-acquainted with the environment and its associated
challenges. It also is important that the tools themselves are designed
specifically for the embedded environment.
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