A framework for context-aware power management on embedded devices

Abstract

Power management for modern embedded devices is not a simple task, because its scope is not limited to simple system-level control, but needs to consider device and application status as well. In addition, as the desired power control behavior varies from product to product, the same software often become unreusable for other embedded systems. In order to solve this problem, we propose a framework for context-aware power management on embedded devices. Our framework is made up of policy definitions and a mechanism to handle that policy. By defining the power management policies suitable for each product, programmers can intuitively realize the requested power management behavior without going into the details of its mechanisms. We have evaluated our framework by applying it to a practical system, through which we confirmed that our framework can realize fine-grained power management on practical embedded systems through intuitive policy descriptions.