Research

Our research deals with the design of embedded computing and communication systems and their underlying hardware and software technologies.

Power aware computing and communication: Power consumption has become one of the most significant design concerns in a variety of electronic systems ranging from tiny embedded devices (biomedical implants, wireless sensor nodes) to personal computing systems (cell-phones, PDAs) to high-performance servers and large data centers. We are investigating HW/SW system architectures, design methodologies, networking protocols, for power aware computing and communication in embedded systems. Current research projects include: (a) Coordinated Power Management for Wireless Embedded Systems: Most work on power management of mobile and wireless systems has focussed on individual components component-level power management. However, in order to achieve extreme energy efficieny, all the components of a system have to be power-managed in a coordinated manner. This is due to two reasons, (a) all the components contribute to the overall energy consumption of a mobile and wireless system, and (b) the. We are investigating coordinated power management for wireless systems incorporating multiple sub-systems including computation, communication, storage, and power-supply. Further, in networked systems, where devices communicate with each other, power management decisions at the individual devices are dependent.

Environmental energy-hervesting embedded systems: Harvesting energy from the environment is a desirable and increasingly important capability in several emerging applications of embedded systems such as sensor networks, biomedical implants, etc. While energy harvesting has the potential to enable near-perpetual system operation, designing an efficient energy harvesting system that actually realizes this potential requires an in-depth understanding of several complex tradeoffs. These tradeoffs arise due to the interaction of numerous factors such as the characteristics of the harvesting transducers, chemistry and capacity of the batteries used (if any), power supply requirements and power management features of the embedded system, application behavior, etc. This paper surveys the various issues and tradeoffs involved in designing and operating energy harvesting embedded systems. System design techniques are described that target high conversion and storage efficiency by extracting the most energy from the environment and making it maximally available for consumption. Harvesting aware power management techniques are also described, which reconcile the very different spatio-temporal characteristics of energy availability and energy usage within a system and across a network.

Reliable embedded systems:

Secure embedded systems: