Event-driven firmware design with hardware handler scheduling on Cortex-M-based microcontroller

The paper describes the concept and the design principles of a purely event-driven firmware for a Cortex-M core microcontroller used in an embedded system, based on hardware-scheduled event handling routines. The concept may be a practical alternative to the design paradigm based on an event loop or a real-time operating system, especially for not overly complex designs. When compared to an RTOS-based approach, the presented technique enables much shorter event response time and simpler synchronization of accesses to critical shared resources.