Low power light-weight embedded systems

Abstract

Light-weight embedded systems are now gaining more popularity due to the recent technological advances in fabrication that have resulted in more powerful tiny processors with greater communication capabilities that pose various scientific challenges for researchers. Perhaps the most significant challenge is the energy consumption concern and reliability, mainly due to the small size of batteries. In this tutorial, we portray a brief description of low-power, light-weight embedded systems, depict several power profiling studies previously conducted, and present several research challenges that require low-power consumption in embedded systems. For each challenge, we highlight how low-power designs may enhance the overall performance of the system. Finally, we present a several techniques that minimize the power consumption in such systems.