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Energy harvesting sensor systems typically incorporate energy buffers (e.g., rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors) to accommodate fluctuations in supply. However, the presence of these elements limits the miniaturization of devices. In recent years, researchers have proposed a new paradigm, transient computing, where systems operate directly from the energy harvesting source and allow computation to span across power cycles, without adding energy buffers. Various transient computing approaches have addressed the challenge of power intermittency by retaining the processor's state using non-volatile memory. However, no generic approach has yet been proposed to retain the state of peripherals external to the processing element. This paper proposes RESTOP, flexible middleware which retains the state of multiple external peripherals that are connected to a computing element (i.e., a microcontroller) through protocols such as SPI or I2C. RESTOP acts as an interface between the main application and the peripheral, which keeps a record, at run-time, of the transmitted data in order to restore peripheral configuration after a power interruption. RESTOP is practically implemented and validated using three digitally interfaced peripherals, successfully restoring their configuration after power interruptions, imposing a maximum time overhead of 15% when configuring a peripheral. However, this represents an overhead of only 0.82% during complete execution of our typical sensing application, which is substantially lower than existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy harvesters are being used to power autonomous systems, but their output power is variable and intermittent. To sustain computation, these systems integrate batteries or supercapacitors to smooth out rapid changes in harvester output. Energy storage devices require time for charging and increase the size, mass, and cost of systems. The field of transient computing moves away from this approach, by powering the system directly from the harvester output. To prevent an application from having to restart computation after a power outage, approaches such as Hibernus allow these systems to hibernate when supply failure is imminent. When the supply reaches the operating threshold, the last saved state is restored and the operation is continued from the point it was interrupted. This paper proposes Hibernus++ to intelligently adapt the hibernate and restore thresholds in response to source dynamics and system load properties. Specifically, capabilities are built into the system to autonomously characterize the hardware platform and its performance during hibernation in order to set the hibernation threshold at a point which minimizes wasted energy and maximizes computation time. Similarly, the system auto-calibrates the restore threshold depending on the balance of energy supply and consumption in order to maximize computation time. Hibernus++ is validated both theoretically and experimentally on microcontroller hardware using both synthesized and real energy harvesters. Results show that Hibernus++ provides an average 16% reduction in energy consumption and an improvement of 17% in application execution time over state-of-the-art approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Transient computing systems do not have energy storage, and operate directly from energy harvesting. These systems are often faced with the inherent challenge of low-current or transient power supply. In this paper, we propose “power-neutral” operation, a new paradigm for such systems, whereby the instantaneous power consumption of the system must match the instantaneous harvested power. Power neutrality is achieved using a control algorithm for dynamic frequency scaling, modulating system performance gracefully in response to the incoming power. Detailed system model is used to determine design parameters for selecting the system voltage thresholds where the operating frequency will be raised or lowered, or the system will be hibernated. The proposed control algorithm for power-neutral operation is experimentally validated using a microcontroller incorporating voltage threshold-based interrupts for frequency scaling. The microcontroller is powered directly from real energy harvesters; results demonstrate that a power-neutral system sustains operation for 4%–88% longer with up to 21% speedup in application execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key challenge to the future of energy-harvesting systems is the discontinuous power supply that is often generated. We propose a new approach, Hibernus, which enables computation to be sustained during intermittent supply. The approach has a low energy and time overhead which is achieved by reactively hibernating: saving system state only once, when power is about to be lost, and then sleeping until the supply recovers. We validate the approach experimentally on a processor with FRAM nonvolatile memory, allowing it to reactively hibernate using only energy stored in its decoupling capacitance. When compared to a recently proposed technique, the approach reduces processor time and energy overheads by 76%–100% and 49%–79% respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]