Abstract—This paper presents and evaluates a new approach of modeling energy consumption of embedded systems resulted
by concurrent software components. The objective is to enable
energy estimation within early phases of system development,
which allows system designers to compare different allocations of software components within networked systems.
The model is presented in detail and its application demo
started by a case study. Additionally, an execution time
estimation for software components is presented which is necessary for the energy model – but previously not available.
The model was developed being applicable early in the
development process, i.e. previous to any software implementation. This was realized by using only available information.
The individual elements of the presented model are: energy consumption of software components themselves, energy
consumption resulted by any software component, and energy consumption resulted by specific software components. The
variables of the model can be estimated during early phases of system design using existing methods, expecting the execution time of software components. For that reason, a previously energy estimation technique [1] was further developed to
estimate the execution time based on program flowcharts.
The estimation was verified by using three commercially
available benchmarks. The flowcharts of these are utilized to
estimate the execution times. The comparison between
estimated and measured execution time of an exemplary
embedded system results in an estimation error bandwidth between -12.5 % and +6.8 %. Additionally, an algorithm is
presented which enables an automated analysis of program flowcharts as part of the execution time estimation. The developed model was applied within an automotive case
study which shows a theoretical energy saving potential of
36.2 %. This demonstrates the potential and relevance of
modeling energy estimation within early development phases.
Index Terms—Embedded systems, energy efficiency, energy
estimation, networked embedded systems (automotive).
The authors are with the Fraunhofer Institute for Embedded Systems and
Communication Technologies ESK, Munich, Germany (e-mail: {forename.
surname}@esk.fraunhofer.de).
[PDF]
Cite: Patrick Heinrich, Hannes Bergler, and Erik Oswald, "Early Energy Estimation of Networked Embedded
Systems Executing Concurrent Software Components," International Journal of Modeling and Optimization vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 119-127, 2015.
