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Eshan Tarapore
Independent Researcher
India
Abstract
Object-oriented design patterns encapsulate recurring solutions to common software design problems and have been extensively studied in desktop and enterprise domains. However, their application to resource-constrained embedded systems poses unique challenges, including limited memory, real-time requirements, and tight coupling to hardware interfaces. This manuscript investigates the suitability and impact of five core design patterns—the Singleton, Factory Method, Observer, Strategy, and Decorator—in C++-based embedded applications circa 2014. We develop a methodological framework combining static analysis, simulation on an ARM Cortex-M3 emulator, and performance benchmarking to quantify memory overhead, CPU utilization, and code maintainability. Five research objectives guide our study, culminating in a statistical analysis table comparing pattern implementations against baseline procedural code. Simulation experiments demonstrate that, when judiciously applied, design patterns can improve modularity and testability with less than 8 % additional memory usage and under 5 % CPU overhead. We conclude with guidelines for embedded engineers on pattern selection and lightweight implementations, accompanied by ten APA-style references of works published up to 2014.
Keywords
embedded systems, object-oriented design patterns, resource constraints, C++, ARM Cortex-M3
References
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