A unifying interface abstraction for accelerated computing in sensor nodes

Abstract

Hardware-software co-design techniques are very suitable to develop the next generation of sensornet applications, which have high computational demands. By making use of a lowpower FPGA, the peak computational performance of a sensor node can be improved without significant degradation of the standby power dissipation. In this contribution, we present a methodology and tool to enable hardware/software codesign for sensor node application development. We present the integration of nesC, a sensornet programming language, with GEZEL, an easy-to-use hardware description language. We describe the hardware/software interface at different levels of abstraction: at the level of the design language, at the level of the co-simulator, and in the hardware implementation. We use a layered, uniform approach that is particularly suited to deal with the heterogeneous interfaces typically found on small embedded processors. We illustrate the strengths of our approach by means of a prototype application: the integration of a hardware-accelerated crypto-application in a nesC application.

Hardware-software co-design for heterogeneous multiprocessor sensor nodes

“…However, [9] has several limitations. First, [9] focuses on the simulation for the processor (MCU) with coprocessor (FPGA). However, our design flow for multiprocessor nodes' applications between simulation and actual hardware development is different.…”

“…In [9], a reusable hardware/software interface between a processor (MCU) and a coprocessor (FPGA) is demonstrated. However, [9] has several limitations.…”

“…In [9], a reusable hardware/software interface between a processor (MCU) and a coprocessor (FPGA) is demonstrated. However, [9] has several limitations. First, [9] focuses on the simulation for the processor (MCU) with coprocessor (FPGA).…”

“…In this paper, we run and evaluate applications on both single processor and multiprocessor sensor nodes using our design methodology. In addition, [9] does not consider wireless sensor network environment.…”