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RESTOP: retaining external peripheral state in intermittently-powered sensor systems

RESTOP: retaining external peripheral state in intermittently-powered sensor systems
RESTOP: retaining external peripheral state in intermittently-powered sensor systems
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.
Energy Harvesting, External peripheral, Sensor system, Transient computing
1424-8220
1-19
Rodriguez Arreola, Alberto
e20f97e9-b616-47de-9f37-f4a445e0adac
Balsamo, Domenico
fa2dc20a-e3da-4d74-9070-9c61c6a471ba
Merrett, Geoff
89b3a696-41de-44c3-89aa-b0aa29f54020
Weddell, Alexander
3d8c4d63-19b1-4072-a779-84d487fd6f03
Rodriguez Arreola, Alberto
e20f97e9-b616-47de-9f37-f4a445e0adac
Balsamo, Domenico
fa2dc20a-e3da-4d74-9070-9c61c6a471ba
Merrett, Geoff
89b3a696-41de-44c3-89aa-b0aa29f54020
Weddell, Alexander
3d8c4d63-19b1-4072-a779-84d487fd6f03

Rodriguez Arreola, Alberto, Balsamo, Domenico, Merrett, Geoff and Weddell, Alexander (2018) RESTOP: retaining external peripheral state in intermittently-powered sensor systems. Sensors, 18 (1), 1-19, [172]. (doi:10.3390/s18010172).

Record type: Article

Abstract

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.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 5 January 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 10 January 2018
Published date: 10 January 2018
Keywords: Energy Harvesting, External peripheral, Sensor system, Transient computing

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 417122
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/417122
ISSN: 1424-8220
PURE UUID: 9d1af757-70fa-42fd-aef0-074f907f1af7
ORCID for Geoff Merrett: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-4980-3894
ORCID for Alexander Weddell: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6763-5460

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 19 Jan 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:49

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Contributors

Author: Alberto Rodriguez Arreola
Author: Domenico Balsamo
Author: Geoff Merrett ORCID iD
Author: Alexander Weddell ORCID iD

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