Acknowledgements

I am very thankful to my employer FutureSoft and its CEO Mr. K.V. Ramani for their support. I have been fortunate to be associated with several excellent engineers, who have helped in the ideas for this book (even if they did not know it!)– KK.Srinivasan, S. Ravikumar, Dr. Raj Yavatkar, Vijay Doraiswami, Kwok Kong, Manikantan Srinivasan , Rajesh Kumar, Elwin Eliazer and several others.

I wish to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Raj Yavatkar, Chief Software Architect at Intel, who agreed to write a foreword for the book.

Robert Ward of CMP Books was the person who worked with me at the beginning of this project to make this book a reality. Michelle O’Neal was a constant source of encouragement and worked wonders with her project management. Justin Fulmer was very patient with my edits and corrections. Paul Temme, who ably handled the entire project, kept everything running.

I will be failing in my duty if I did not mention Sue Thorstensen, the technical editor. She ensured that I did not stray, polished the manuscript in several areas and made it readable. Manikantan Srinivasan, Vijay Doraiswami and Sandhya Ravikumar provided valuable comments. Mani was very diligent in pointing out repetitions and inconsistencies, especially in the fine print.

This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my wife Padmini Sridhar, who was behind me throughout this process. Ramasamy Rathnam and Asokan Selvaraj were two individuals who encouraged me to put my thoughts down on paper. I am also thankful to my support network which included Mrs. T. Saraswathi, Dr. Girija Suresh., R. Suresh, Sunder Mahalingam and Dr. Suresh Gopalan, among others. Suresh, in particular, kept me going when I was getting bogged down.

This book is intended to be a practitioner’s guide to embedded communications software design. It would have served its purpose if it helps you understand and accelerate one or more phases of your next project. I take responsibility for any errors/omissions that may still remain in the text. I hope you will find this book useful.