Title: Peripheral-conscious energy-efficient scheduling for weakly hard real-time systems

Authors: Linwei Niu; Gang Quan

Addresses: Department of Math and Computer Science, West Virginia State University, Institute, WV 93311, USA ' Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Florida International University, Engineering Center 3911, 10555 West Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33174, USA

Abstract: In this paper, we study the problem of reducing the energy consumption for a weakly hard real-time system. The weakly hard real-time system is modelled by the (m, k)-constraints, which require that at least m out of any k consecutive jobs of a task meet their deadlines. Since the system energy is consumed not only by the processor alone but also in a large part by other peripheral devices, we first propose a static approach, with the specifications of peripheral devices taken into consideration, to partition the jobs into mandatory/optional jobs to achieve the dual goals of (m, k)-guarantee and overall energy minimisation. Based on that, we present a dynamic scheduling algorithm that adopts preemption control technique and dynamic mandatory/optional partitioning strategy to reduce the energy consumption of the whole system dynamically. Our approach can effectively minimise the system-wide energy consumption and guarantee the (m, k)-deadlines at the same time. The novelty and effectiveness of our techniques are demonstrated through extensive simulation studies.

Keywords: peripherals; energy-efficient scheduling; weakly hard real-time systems; energy efficiency; energy consumption; modelling; dynamic scheduling; preemption control; partitioning strategy; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2015.066138

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2015 Vol.7 No.1, pp.11 - 25

Received: 03 Jan 2013
Accepted: 10 Dec 2013

Published online: 03 Dec 2014 *

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