The low power energy aware processing (LEAP)embedded networked sensor system

Abstract

Abstract-A broad range of embedded networked sensor (ENS) systems for critical environmental monitoring applications now require complex, high peak power dissipating sensor devices, as well as on-demand high performance computing and high bandwidth communication. Embedded computing demands for these new platforms include support for computationally intensive image and signal processing as well as optimization and statistical computing. To meet these new requirements while maintaining critical support for low energy operation, a new multiprocessor node hardware and software architecture, Low Power Energy Aware Processing (LEAP), has been developed. This architecture integrates fine-grained energy dissipation monitoring and sophisticated power control scheduling for all subsystems including sensor subsystems. The LEAP architecture enables complex energy-aware algorithm design by providing a simple interface to control numerous platform and sensor power modes and report detailed energy usage information. This paper also describes experimental results of a new distributed node testbed based on LEAP demonstrating that by exploiting high energy efficiency components and enabling proper on-demand scheduling, the LEAP architecture meets both sensing performance and energy dissipation objectives for a broad class of applications. This testbed including the network of distributed LEAP nodes and a system producing physical, mobile events provides a development environment for LEAP-hosted algorithms. New design principles, detailed implementation, and in-network programming and remote debugging capabilities of this platform are also described. While this is the first report of the LEAP system, it has been deployed for nearly one year with 50 users developing energy aware systems.Keywords-embedded wireless networked sensor, energy-aware multprocessor platform, sensor platform hardware and software architecture

The Energy Endoscope: Real-Time Detailed Energy Accounting for Wireless Sensor Nodes

“…While these platforms present high peak operating power demand, prior work has shown that design objectives focusing on high energy efficiency along with proper scheduling of platform components yield low average energy operation [13]. However, as will be shown here, high efficiency may be achieved only if platform energy usage is measured at runtime, thereby revealing the effects of not only unpredictable application demands, but also of contention between platform components and computing tasks.…”

“…Most recently, the critical demand for high energy efficiency operation has increased yet further with the introduction of the new class of 32-bit processor-based WSN nodes that meet new application requirements for support of high performance sensors and complex algorithms [13,11,10].…”

SRCP: Simple Remote Control for Perpetual High-Power Sensor Networks

“…A modular hardware platform, such as our prototype or LEAP [16], is a useful paradigm for high-power WSNs, since they allow a controller to independently power and operate each component. Our experiences demonstrate that SRCP is flexible enough to support a range of functions on different devices in such a platform.…”

“…While SRCP does assume dual-radio/dual-processor nodes, previous work on these systems focuses primarily on dynamically assigning tasks to components to adjust the energy/performance ratio on specific hardware platforms [3,5,16]. SRCP's focus is more narrow but also more general: it defines a simple protocol that is a foundation for remote management of a broad range of hardware platforms with control processors.…”

“…SRCP's focus is more narrow but also more general: it defines a simple protocol that is a foundation for remote management of a broad range of hardware platforms with control processors. In particular, Leap is a hardware/software architecture using two battery-powered processors and radios that shares our focus on high-power WSNs [16]. Leap and SRCP share a common goal but a different focus: SRCP is a simple, extensible, and hardware-independent protocol that distills a small set of core remote management functions for always-on control processors, while Leap combines a hardware platform that supports finegrained energy monitoring with algorithms for dynamically scheduling tasks to processors to minimize energy consumption.…”