Dustin McIntire

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

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. The LEAP architecture integrates fine-grained energy dissipation monitoring and sophisticated power control scheduling for all subsystems including sensor subsystems. This paper also describes a new distributed node testbed demonstrating that by exploiting high high energy efficiency components and enabling proper on-demand scheduling, the LEAP architecture may meet both sensing performance and energy dissipation objectives for a broad class of applications

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

This paper describes a new embedded networked sensor platform architecture that combines hardware and software tools providing detailed, fine-grained real-time energy usage information. We introduce the LEAP2 platform, a qualitative step forward over the previously developed LEAP and other similar platforms. LEAP2 is based on anew low power ASIC system and generally applicable supporting architecture that provides unprecedented capabilities for directly observing energy usage of multiple subsystems in real-time. Real-time observation with microsecond-scale time resolution enables direct accounting of energy dissipation for each computing task as well as for each hardware subsystem. The new hardware architecture is exploited with our new software tools, etop and endoscope. A series of experimental investigations provide high-resolution power information in networking, storage, memory and processing for primary embedded networked sensing applications. Using results obtained in real-time we show that for a large class of wireless sensor network nodes, there exist several interdependencies in energy consumption between different subsystems. Through the use of our measurement tools we demonstrate that by carefully selecting the system operating points, energy savings of over 60% can be achieved while retaining system performance.

etop: sensor network application energy profiling on the LEAP2 platform

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. The LEAP architecture integrates fine-grained energy dissipation monitoring and sophisticated power control scheduling for all subsystems including sensor subsystems. The LEAP2 platform is a second generation LEAP system with even higher resolution energy monitoring as well as the unique ability to do per process and per application energy profiling via a dedicated high performance ASIC. Our demonstration will highlight this profiling capability through a custom monitoring application named etop.

Energy-Efficient Sensing with the Low Power, Energy Aware Processing (LEAP) Architecture

A broad range of embedded networked sensing (ENS) applications have appeared for large-scale systems, introducing new requirements leading to new embedded architectures, associated algorithms, and supporting software systems. These new requirements include the need for diverse and complex sensor systems that present demands for energy and computational resources, as well as for broadband communication. To satisfy application demands 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. In this article, we described the LEAP design approach, in which the system is able to adaptively select the most energy-efficient hardware components matching an application’s needs. The LEAP platform supports highly dynamic requirements in sensing fidelity, computational load, storage media, and network bandwidth. It focuses on episodic operation of each component and considers the energy dissipation for each platform task by integrating fine-grained energy-dissipation monitoring and sophisticated power-control scheduling for all subsystems, including sensors. In addition to the LEAP platform’s unique hardware capabilities, its software architecture has been designed to provide an easy way to use power management interface and a robust, fault-tolerant operating environment and to enable remote upgrade of all software components. LEAP platform capabilities are demonstrated by example implementations, such as a network protocol design and a light source event detection algorithm. Through the use of a distributed node testbed, we demonstrate that by exploiting high energy-efficiency components and enabling proper on-demand scheduling, the LEAP architecture may meet both sensing performance and energy dissipation objectives for a broad class of applications.

A modular low-energy wireless sensing and processing platform with an open software framework for unattended ground sensor applications

A low-power hardware platform and a software framework to support distributed wireless sensing for unattended ground sensor (UGS) applications has been developed. This platform provides a comprehensive set of hardware capabilities needed to meet the sensing, processing, and communication requirements for UGS, including a 16-channel analog interface, a processor dedicated to managing real-time requirements, dual wireless interfaces, and a low-power system bus to enable system modularity. An open software framework based on the Linux kernel is hosted on the main system processor. This framework incorporates the tools for effectively utilizing the capabilities of the hardware platform and rapidly developing applications in a networked, embedded environment.

Energy-aware networked embedded systems for tactical unattended ground sensors

A system architecture, and a hardware implementation leveraging the architecture, has been developed for energy-aware, networked, embedded systems designed for use in tactical unattended ground sensor (UGS) applications. This modular system architecture is designed around a flexible bus design that meets the needs for low-power embedded systems, incorporating support for 32-bit inter-module data transfers, module synchronization, power control, and power distribution. A Linux-based software framework operating on the main system processor has been developed to provide application developers with the ability to easily leverage the hardware functionality of the system. The low-power design methods employed in the system design are discussed along with a system implementation using these methods.