Power supply and consumption co-optimization of portable embedded systems with hybrid power supply

Energy efficiency has always been an important design criterion for portable embedded systems. To compensate for the shortcomings of electrochemical batteries such as low power density, limited cycle life, and the rate capacity effect, supercapacitors have been employed as complementary power supplies for electrochemical batteries, i.e., hybrid power supplies comprised of batteries and supercapacitors have been proposed. In this work, we consider a portable embedded system with a hybrid power supply and executing periodic real-time tasks. We perform system power management from both the power supply side and the power consumption side to maximize the system service time. Specifically, we use feedback control for maintaining the supercapacitor energy at a certain level by regulating the discharging current of the battery, such that the supercapacitor has the capability to buffer the load current fluctuation. At the power consumption side, we perform task scheduling to assist supercapacitor energy maintenance. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed joint optimization framework of task scheduling and power supply control successfully prolongs the total service time by up to 57%.