A Hardware Compensation Mechanism for Embedded Energy Harvesting Emulation

On the Stability of a Hardware Compensation Mechanism for Embedded Energy Harvesting Emulators

“…Lattanzi et al designed a hardware-software embedded system that overcomes some of the limitations of these works [5,6]. In particular, the emulation platform features low-power consumption, small form factor, and reduced cost, and has been demonstrated capable of achieving good levels of accuracy with tight latencies that make it compatible with real-time applications.…”

“…As a consequence, experimental testing of systems that exploit EH sources is particularly hard because of the difficulty of reproducing, up to an acceptable degree, realistic operating conditions. Emulating the behavior of given renewable sources through ad hoc hardware-software systems is nowadays considered an option, alternatively to simulation (which trades off reproducibility and ease of parameter space exploration for accuracy) and to testbeds (which offer realistic experimental environment at the cost of low reproducibility and scalability) [5].…”

“…Research works have recently introduced different solutions (like [5][6][7][8][9]) that enable, to different extents, the emulation of EH sources. Emulation platforms may be classified according to their: (i) accuracy (i.e., the capability of reproducing with precision a given energy trace); (ii) latency (i.e., how the emulator is able to quickly react and adapt to dynamic changes); (iii) possibility of supporting multi-source emulation; (iv) power consumption; and (v) cost and form factor.…”

“…Although the average latency of the whole system has been evaluated empirically to be around 172 µs [6], this performance level could potentially impair real-time performance, especially in conditions characterized by fast temporal dynamics. To improve the capability to react to quick changes and, as a consequence, to decrease delays, a compensation circuit that implements in hardware the error-correction logic of the software has been introduced in [5].…”

“…In this work, we aim, in particular, at discussing and evaluating some distinguishing features of the emulation platform proposed in [5,6]. In particular, the circuit in charge of implementing the above-mentioned compensation is based on a positive feedback loop, which could potentially result into instability.…”