A Hierarchical Approach for Power Management on Mobile Embedded Systems

• Published in: From Model-Driven Design to Resource Management for Distributed Embedded Systems pp. 265 - 274
• Main Authors: Hoeller, Arliones Stevert, Wanner, Lucas Francisco, Fröhlich, Antônio Augusto
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Boston, MA Springer US 2006
• Series: IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
• Subjects: embedded operating systems; embedded systems; energy consumption management; low-power computing; mobile computing; Power management
• ISBN: 9780387393612; 0387393617
• ISSN: 1571-5736
• DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-39362-9_28

Mobile Embedded Systems usually are simple, battery-powered systems with resource limitations. In some situations, their batteries lifetime becomes a primordial factor for reliability. Because of this, it is very important to handle power consumption of such devices in a non-restrictive and low-overhead way. This power management cannot restrict the wide variety of different low-power modes such devices often feature, thus allowing a wider system configurability. However, once in such devices processing and memory are often scarce, the power management strategy cannot compromise large amounts of system resources. In this paper we propose a simplified interface for power management of software and hardware components. The approach is based on the hierarchical organization of such components in a component-based operating system and allows power management of system components without the need for costly techniques or strategies. A case study including real implementations of system and application is presented to evaluate the technique and shows energy saves of almost 40% by just allowing applications to express when certain components are not being used.