CAREER: A Holistic Energy Management Framework for Real-time Embedded Systems

George Mason University, Fairfax VA

Investigators

Abstract

With ever-increasing miniaturization of computers and advances in communication technology, effective energy management in battery-operated embedded systems has gained an unprecedented importance. On the other hand, applications with stringent timing and quality-of-service constraints pose a serious computational burden on these systems. The research community has recently invested significant effort into the investigation of energy management techniques for real-time embedded systems. Nevertheless, most of these studies focus on a single component (e.g. the processor or memory) and a specific power management technique (e.g. reducing the clock frequency or turning off a component). This CAREER research is developing a comprehensive framework for system-wide energy management in real-time embedded systems. The framework includes new formal models, algorithms and tools to reduce overall system energy, across multiple components and through multiple techniques. Another focus of the project is on the lifetime-aware schemes that adjust the performance in terms of the data quality or timeliness, to sustain the system for a given operation (or, mission) time with a fixed energy budget. This research will have a substantial impact on the next-generation of real-time embedded systems by extending their lifetime significantly, and by enabling them to deliver high-quality performance with limited resources.