Engineer Internship: Implementation of an embedded debug framework for the firmware of an IEEE-802.15.4/Thread/Zigbee radio chip F/M
Job Description
- A passion for development and a curiosity to quickly explore and understand new technical subjects are key points for the success of this internship.
- Master's degree (Bac +5), final year of Engineering School, specializing in Industrial Computing or Electronics.
- Low-level software (C, C++)
- ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers
- Real Time OS
- Handling electronic boards and reading schematics
- Python programming language
- Good level of English
- Define the list of new features to develop for the debug framework.
- Propose technical solutions for new features and implement them.
- Port and validate the debug framework on other platforms.
Context
NXP's "Wireless Connectivity" group designs innovative wireless chips for IoT, automotive, industry, and smart homes. These low-power, high-performance chips provide Wi-Fi, BT/BLE, and IEEE-802.15.4 connectivity to products equipped with them.
The Wireless Connectivity Software team in Caen is notably responsible for providing the Firmware that gives IEEE-802.15.4 connectivity to NXP's radio chips.
Based on a real-time operating system (RTOS), this embedded software must respond quickly to multiple asynchronous stimuli.
The complexity and temporal sensitivity of this Firmware's interactions make it difficult to resolve certain bugs that are only highlighted by specific robustness tests. It is indeed not easy to determine the particular condition causing the observed defect from the symptom and the information captured by usual analysis tools (JTAG probe, breakpoints, memory dumps, etc.).
To remedy this, we have undertaken the implementation of an embedded software component allowing to capture and restore the sequence that precedes the occurrence of unexpected behavior. This debug framework is already available on one of our platforms, but some important functionalities are missing.
We are therefore looking for a final-year intern (duration: 6 months) to improve this debug infrastructure, embedded in our IEEE-802.15.4 firmware.
Missions
After familiarizing yourself with the architecture of our embedded software and the existing debug infrastructure, the first part of the internship will consist of defining the list of new functionalities to develop. For example:
- Adding support for the Segger RTT interface
- Inserting logs into existing functional SPI communication frames to make them non-intrusive
- Using a secondary interface to share logs
- Displaying real-time logs on a PC
The second part of the internship will consist of proposing a technical solution for each of these functionalities and implementing them on one of our products (based on an ARM Cortex-M3 core).
Finally, the last phase of the internship will consist of porting and validating this debug framework on our other platforms.
Profile
- Bac +5, final year of Engineering School, specializing in Industrial Computing or Electronics.
- Low-level software (C, C++)
- ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers
- Real Time OS
- Handling electronic boards and reading schematics
- Python programming language
- Good level of English, ability to evolve in an international context
- A passion for development and a curiosity to quickly explore and understand new technical subjects are key points for the success of this internship.
