UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Bibliotecária-chefe do Instituto de Informática: Beatriz Regina Bastos Haro To Jo, my lovely wife, for her love, huge patience, support, and understanding at the moments I was absent. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have a noticeable improvement in my professional/personal life after these six years working in the Embedded Systems Lab at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. I have been with many people that contributed directly or indirectly to this improvement. I would like to express gratitude to all of them. First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Carlos Eduardo Pereira. He is not only my advisor but also a friend. His help along two years of master and four years of Ph.D. did strongly contribute to several aspects of my professional and personal life in Porto Alegre. Our discussions have been a fundamental piece for the accomplishment of this work. I tried to learn the maximum I could from his example. Other important part of my Ph.D. was my “sandwich ” stage at the University of Pader-born, Germany. For this, I would like to thank Dr. Franz Josef Rammig for accepting m