abstract: The ubiquity of embedded computational systems has exploded in recent years impacting everything from hand-held computers and automotive driver assistance to battlefield command and control and autonomous systems. Typical embedded computing systems are characterized by highly resource constrained operating environments. In particular, limited energy resources constrain performance in embedded systems often reliant on independent fuel or battery supplies. Ultimately, mitigating energy consumption without sacrificing performance in these systems is paramount. In this work power/performance optimization emphasizing prevailing data centric applications including video and signal processing is addressed for energy constrained embedded systems. Frameworks are presented which exchange quality of service (QoS) for reduced power consumption enabling power aware energy management. Power aware systems provide users with tools for precisely managing available energy resources in light of user priorities, extending availability when QoS can be sacrificed. Specifically, power aware management tools for next generation bistable electrophoretic displays and the state of the art H.264 video codec are introduced. The multiprocessor system on chip (MPSoC) paradigm is examined in the context of next generation many-core hand-held computing devices. MPSoC architectures promise to breach the power/performance wall prohibiting advancement of complex high performance single core architectures. Several many-core distributed memory MPSoC architectures are commercially available, while the tools necessary to effectively tap their enormous potential remain largely open for discovery. Adaptable scalability in many-core systems is addressed through a scalable high performance multicore H.264 video decoder implemented on the representative Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) architecture. The resulting agile performance scalable system enables efficient adaptive power optimization via decoding-rate driven sleep and voltage/frequency state management. The significant problem of mapping applications onto these architectures is additionally addressed from the perspective of instruction mapping for limited distributed memory architectures with a code overlay generator implemented on the CBE. Finally runtime scheduling and mapping of scalable applications in multitasking environments is addressed through the introduction of a lightweight work partitioning framework targeting streaming applications with low latency and near optimal throughput demonstrated on the CBE. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2011

abstract: Semiconductor scaling technology has led to a sharp growth in transistor counts. This has resulted in an exponential increase on both power dissipation and heat flux (or power density) in modern microprocessors. These microprocessors are integrated as the major components in many modern embedded devices, which offer richer features and attain higher performance than ever before. Therefore, power and thermal management have become the significant design considerations for modern embedded devices. Dynamic voltage/frequency scaling (DVFS) and dynamic power management (DPM) are two well-known hardware capabilities offered by modern embedded processors. However, the power or thermal aware performance optimization is not fully explored for the mainstream embedded processors with discrete DVFS and DPM capabilities. Many key problems have not been answered yet. What is the maximum performance that an embedded processor can achieve under power or thermal constraint for a periodic application? Does there exist an efficient algorithm for the power or thermal management problems with guaranteed quality bound? These questions are hard to be answered because the discrete settings of DVFS and DPM enhance the complexity of many power and thermal management problems, which are generally NP-hard. The dissertation presents a comprehensive study on these NP-hard power and thermal management problems for embedded processors with discrete DVFS and DPM capabilities. In the domain of power management, the dissertation addresses the power minimization problem for real-time schedules, the energy-constrained make-span minimization problem on homogeneous and heterogeneous chip multiprocessors (CMP) architectures, and the battery aware energy management problem with nonlinear battery discharging model. In the domain of thermal management, the work addresses several thermal-constrained performance maximization problems for periodic embedded applications. All the addressed problems are proved to be NP-hard or strongly NP-hard in the study. Then the work focuses on the design of the off-line optimal or polynomial time approximation algorithms as solutions in the problem design space. Several addressed NP-hard problems are tackled by dynamic programming with optimal solutions and pseudo-polynomial run time complexity. Because the optimal algorithms are not efficient in worst case, the fully polynomial time approximation algorithms are provided as more efficient solutions. Some efficient heuristic algorithms are also presented as solutions to several addressed problems. The comprehensive study answers the key questions in order to fully explore the power and thermal management potentials on embedded processors with discrete DVFS and DPM capabilities. The provided solutions enable the theoretical analysis of the maximum performance for periodic embedded applications under power or thermal constraints. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2012

Energy consumption has become a first-class optimization goal in design and implementation of data-intensive computing systems. This is particularly true in the design of database management systems (DBMS), which is one of the most important servers in software stack of modern data centers. Data storage system is one of the essential components of database and has been under many research efforts aiming at reducing its energy consumption. In previous work, dynamic power management (DPM) techniques that make real-time decisions to transition the disks to low-power modes are normally used to save energy in storage systems. In this research, we tackle the limitations of DPM proposals in previous contributions and design a dynamic energy-aware disk storage system in database servers. We introduce a DPM optimization model integrated with model predictive control (MPC) strategy to minimize power consumption of the disk-based storage system while satisfying given performance requirements. It dynamically determines the state of disks and plans for inter-disk data fragment migration to achieve desirable balance between power consumption and query response time. Furthermore, via analyzing our optimization model to identify structural properties of optimal solutions, a fast-solution heuristic DPM algorithm is proposed that can be integrated in large-scale disk storage systems, where finding the most optimal solution might be long, to achieve near-optimal power saving solution within short periods of computational time. The proposed ideas are evaluated through running simulations using extensive set of synthetic workloads. The results show that our solution achieves up to 1.65 times more energy saving while providing up to 1.67 times shorter response time compared to the best existing algorithm in literature. Stream join is a dynamic and expensive database operation that performs join operation in real-time fashion on continuous data streams. Stream joins, also known as window joins, impose high computational time and potentially higher energy consumption compared to other database operations, and thus we also tackle energy-efficiency of stream join processing in this research. Given that there is a strong linear correlation between energy-efficiency and performance of in-memory parallel join algorithms in database servers, we study parallelization of stream join algorithms on multicore processors to achieve energy efficiency and high performance. Equi-join is the most frequent type of join in query workloads and symmetric hash join (SHJ) algorithm is the most effective algorithm to evaluate equi-joins in data streams. To best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose a shared-memory parallel symmetric hash join algorithm on multi-core CPUs. Furthermore, we introduce a novel parallel hash-based stream join algorithm called chunk-based pairing hash join that aims at elevating data throughput and scalability. We also tackle parallel processing of multi-way stream joins where there are more than two input data streams involved in the join operation. To best of our knowledge, we are also the first to propose an in-memory parallel multi-way hash-based stream join on multicore processors. Experimental evaluation on our proposed parallel algorithms demonstrates high throughput, significant scalability, and low latency while reducing the energy consumption. Our parallel symmetric hash join and chunk-based pairing hash join achieve up to 11 times and 12.5 times more throughput, respectively, compared to that of state-of-the-art parallel stream join algorithm. Also, these two algorithms provide up to around 22 times and 24.5 times more throughput, respectively, compared to that of non-parallel (sequential) stream join computation where there is one processing thread.

Atualmente há grande investimento por parte das empresas em sistemas que não podem parar e, conseqüentemente, em sistemas de gerenciamento para perceber a ocorrência de falhas ou prevê-las e evitar que elas aconteçam. Para amenizar os efeitos de falhas no fornecimento de energia elétrica, que são ainda comuns no país e em boa parte do mundo, são utilizados os no-breaks. Esses equipamentos são projetados para garantir o fornecimento de energia por um tempo definido e limitado nos momentos em que a concessionária de energia elétrica interrompe esse fornecimento. O objetivo principal do presente trabalho é investigar uma solução de gerenciamento de no-breaks que possui como grande diferencial a utilização do paradigma de gerenciamento distribuído por delegação, com o uso do protocolo SNMP, apresentando as vantagens desse paradigma. Para a distribuição de tarefas, a solução utiliza a MIB Script e uma implementação deste padrão (JASMIN – Java Script MIB Implementation) de forma que toda a interatividade com a ferramenta e a automatização dos processos que compõem a solução foi implementada com o uso das ferramentas livres Apache e PHP. O trabalho apresenta uma breve descrição sobre o funcionamento dos no-breaks e destaca a UPS-MIB, MIB padrão para gerenciamento desses equipamentos, além de objetos importantes disponibilizados em outras MIBs proprietárias utilizadas para o gerenciamento de no-breaks. Além disso, o presente estudo sugere o uso de ferramentas para que o sistema de gerência seja responsável pelas estações alimentadas pelos nobreaks, ou seja, quando identificado que está próximo o momento do no-break não conseguir mais alimentar a carga, deve-se desligar a carga com segurança para que não ocorra uma perda de dados maior nem haja danos em componentes. Nota-se que o gerenciamento utilizado neste trabalho, realizado através da ferramenta desenvolvida, facilita a detecção de falhas no sistema de fornecimento de energia, de modo a interagir satisfatoriamente com no-breaks para verificar condições da rede elétrica e tomar decisões pró-ativas com o intuito de manter uma rede de computadores em funcionamento, sem que haja percalços por problemas de falta de energia. / Nowadays most companies are investing in non-stop systems, which leads to investments in management systems to know when a fault occurs or to foresee and avoid them. To reduce the effects of power supply faults (which are common in Brazil and in other parts of the world), people use UPS systems. These equipments are designed to guarantee the power supply for a pre-defined limited time, just in case the power company interrupts the supply. The main goal of this work is to present the implementation of a management application for UPS systems, which has the differential of using the management-bydelegation paradigm, based on SNMP, showing the advantages of this paradigm. The application uses Script MIB and an implementation of this standard (JASMIN - Java Script MIB Implementation) for task distribution, in such a way that all the tool interactivity and process automation was done using the free tools Apache and PHP. The work also presents a brief description about the UPS functioning, and shows UPS-MIB, the standard MIB for UPS management. Additionally the work presents some important objects available in some custom MIBs that are used for UPS management too. This study suggests the use of a set of tools to make the management system responsible for the workstations plugged on the UPS, which means that when the UPS is about to be unable to maintain the load, it should be turned off safely to avoid data losses or hardware faults. One can note that the management done in this work through the developed tool makes easy the fault detection in the power supply system. This leads to a good interaction with the UPS to verify the conditions of the power network in order to take decisions to maintain the computer network running safely.

The wireless sensor network (WSN) is increasingly used in many areas nowadays. It can be applied to provide the solutions to environmental problems, help increasing security and safety systems, and make the detection of the problems more efficient, e.g. the earthquake or tidal wave, which will harmful to humans. The WNS is durable and resistant to all types of terrain and climate, but while the WSN system is more and more widespread, one of the obstacles hindering the growth of this technology and the demand for WSN applications is the limited battery lifespan. Consequently, there is a significant requirement for techniques for prolonging the battery’s lifespan. Therefore, one potential solution is to use alternative energy sources combined with the sensor nodes in WSN, specifically energy harvesting from existing environmental sources. This research project reviews the characteristics of each kind of energy harvesting, understanding the various energy sources (solar energy, vibration energy and wind power), including wireless power transfer (WPT) by using electromagnetic (EM) radiation energy transfer or RF radio-frequency emission and magnetic coupled energy transfer. They are adopted for extending node’s life in the WSN, based on published information. Then it compares these diverse alternative energy methods and identifies for the most suitable energy harvesting method for application to wireless sensor nodes in order to prolong the lifespan of the battery. The major findings from the researcher include that wireless power transfer energy harvesting (WPT) using the magnetic field is the most appropriate tool for extending the lifespan of the WSN system. In addition, the author also designed an experiment to test this alternative energy, achieving by modelling the wireless power transfer with four coils. From the experimental results, it can be seen that the WPT technique using energy harvesting with magnetic inductive source can be applied to prolong the lifespan of the WSN system.

In this report, the modeling process and operation of an autonomous hybrid power system is studied. It is built based on a hypothetical case study of electrification of a remote village of 100 inhabitants in Kenya. The power demand is estimated and the costs of equipment components are specified after extensive research, so that the techno-economical design of the system can be carried out. The microgrid consists of photovoltaics, wind turbine, batteries, diesel genset, basic loads and water pumping and purification load. The system is modeled and simulated in terms of power management and its operation as well as the performance of the dispatch strategy is assessed. Problems like the management of extra power or tackling the deficit of power in the system are addressed. The model represents reliably the behavior of the microgrid and several improving actions are suggested.

Atualmente há grande investimento por parte das empresas em sistemas que não podem parar e, conseqüentemente, em sistemas de gerenciamento para perceber a ocorrência de falhas ou prevê-las e evitar que elas aconteçam. Para amenizar os efeitos de falhas no fornecimento de energia elétrica, que são ainda comuns no país e em boa parte do mundo, são utilizados os no-breaks. Esses equipamentos são projetados para garantir o fornecimento de energia por um tempo definido e limitado nos momentos em que a concessionária de energia elétrica interrompe esse fornecimento. O objetivo principal do presente trabalho é investigar uma solução de gerenciamento de no-breaks que possui como grande diferencial a utilização do paradigma de gerenciamento distribuído por delegação, com o uso do protocolo SNMP, apresentando as vantagens desse paradigma. Para a distribuição de tarefas, a solução utiliza a MIB Script e uma implementação deste padrão (JASMIN – Java Script MIB Implementation) de forma que toda a interatividade com a ferramenta e a automatização dos processos que compõem a solução foi implementada com o uso das ferramentas livres Apache e PHP. O trabalho apresenta uma breve descrição sobre o funcionamento dos no-breaks e destaca a UPS-MIB, MIB padrão para gerenciamento desses equipamentos, além de objetos importantes disponibilizados em outras MIBs proprietárias utilizadas para o gerenciamento de no-breaks. Além disso, o presente estudo sugere o uso de ferramentas para que o sistema de gerência seja responsável pelas estações alimentadas pelos nobreaks, ou seja, quando identificado que está próximo o momento do no-break não conseguir mais alimentar a carga, deve-se desligar a carga com segurança para que não ocorra uma perda de dados maior nem haja danos em componentes. Nota-se que o gerenciamento utilizado neste trabalho, realizado através da ferramenta desenvolvida, facilita a detecção de falhas no sistema de fornecimento de energia, de modo a interagir satisfatoriamente com no-breaks para verificar condições da rede elétrica e tomar decisões pró-ativas com o intuito de manter uma rede de computadores em funcionamento, sem que haja percalços por problemas de falta de energia. / Nowadays most companies are investing in non-stop systems, which leads to investments in management systems to know when a fault occurs or to foresee and avoid them. To reduce the effects of power supply faults (which are common in Brazil and in other parts of the world), people use UPS systems. These equipments are designed to guarantee the power supply for a pre-defined limited time, just in case the power company interrupts the supply. The main goal of this work is to present the implementation of a management application for UPS systems, which has the differential of using the management-bydelegation paradigm, based on SNMP, showing the advantages of this paradigm. The application uses Script MIB and an implementation of this standard (JASMIN - Java Script MIB Implementation) for task distribution, in such a way that all the tool interactivity and process automation was done using the free tools Apache and PHP. The work also presents a brief description about the UPS functioning, and shows UPS-MIB, the standard MIB for UPS management. Additionally the work presents some important objects available in some custom MIBs that are used for UPS management too. This study suggests the use of a set of tools to make the management system responsible for the workstations plugged on the UPS, which means that when the UPS is about to be unable to maintain the load, it should be turned off safely to avoid data losses or hardware faults. One can note that the management done in this work through the developed tool makes easy the fault detection in the power supply system. This leads to a good interaction with the UPS to verify the conditions of the power network in order to take decisions to maintain the computer network running safely.

abstract: High-efficiency DC-DC converters make up one of the important blocks of state-of-the-art power supplies. The trend toward high level of transistor integration has caused load current demands to grow significantly. Supplying high output current and minimizing output current ripple has been a driving force behind the evolution of Multi-phase topologies. Ability to supply large output current with improved efficiency, reduction in the size of filter components, improved transient response make multi-phase topologies a preferred choice for low voltage-high current applications. Current sensing capability inside a system is much sought after for applications which include Peak-current mode control, Current limiting, Overload protection. Current sensing is extremely important for current sharing in Multi-phase topologies. Existing approaches such as Series resistor, SenseFET, inductor DCR based current sensing are simple but their drawbacks such low efficiency, low accuracy, limited bandwidth demand a novel current sensing scheme. This research presents a systematic design procedure of a 5V - 1.8V, 8A 4-Phase Buck regulator with a novel current sensing scheme based on replication of the inductor current. The proposed solution consists of detailed system modeling in PLECS which includes modification of the peak current mode model to accommodate the new current sensing element, derivation of power-stage and Plant transfer functions, Controller design. The proposed model has been verified through PLECS simulations and compared with a transistor-level implementation of the system. The time-domain parameters such as overshoot and settling-time simulated through transistor-level implementation is in close agreement with the results obtained from the PLECS model. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2017

A presente tese busca desenvolver uma metodologia para o gerenciamento e controle de uma geração distribuída que utiliza como fonte principal células a combustível do tipo PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane). A finalidade do trabalho consiste em analisar, controlar e gerenciar a operação da célula a combustível (CaC) nas operações ilhada e conectada em relação à rede de distribuição. Nos primeiros capítulos do texto é elaborada uma revisão acerca do princípio de funcionamento e do modelo da CaC. Após este estágio inicial, são analisadas e modeladas as estruturas dos estágios CC e CA que compõem a geração distribuída. Para o modo conectado é desenvolvida uma estratégia para o controle da tensão do link CC que, a partir da regulação da corrente do estágio CA, permite o gerenciamento da potência fornecida pela CaC. Sequencialmente ao texto e com a adição do estágio de armazenamento de energia, é apresentada uma proposta que vincula a dinâmica da CaC com a estrutura de gerenciamento do estágio CC e CA. Esse fato garante que a alteração do ponto de operação da CaC seja descrito conforme uma dinâmica predeterminada, garantindo assim que transitórios não sejam absorvidos pela CaC. Como parte final da tese, é desenvolvida uma estratégia para a inicialização da CaC, a qual associa o próprio comportamento da célula e o estágio de armazenamento de energia. Os resultados apresentados ao longo do texto mostram que as estruturas propostas tornam a CaC menos sensível a transitórios de carga, além de serem capazes de deslocar (gerenciar) o ponto de operação da célula. Ao final de cada capítulo, são apresentados resultados experimentais e de simulações que auxiliam o entendimento e suportam as propostas do trabalho. / This thesis proposes a methodology for management and control of distributed generation with a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) as the main source. Additionally, the analysis of performance is used when the PEM fuel cell operates in two different operation modes, i.e. in grid-connected and stand-alone modes. In the first chapters, a review of main features and a mathematical model of fuel cells are presented. Sequentially, the theoretical models of the DC- and AC-power converters are analyzed. For grid-connected operation mode, a strategy based on the DC-link voltage control is proposed via current regulation of the AC stage affording thus the management of the power produced by the fuel cell. Additionally, with the use of the storage devices, a proposal that associates the dynamics of the PEM fuel cell with the DC and AC stages is shown. This fact ensures that the movement of the fuel cell operating point is described within a predetermined dynamic, ensuring that transients are not absorbed by the fuel cell. Finally, a strategy for the startup of fuel cell in association with the energy storage stage is developed. The results show that the proposed structures makes the cell less sensitive to the load transient, in order to move (manage) the fuel cell operating point. At the end of each chapter, experimental and simulation results are presented to support the proposed approach.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-05-02T14:25:14Z No. of bitstreams: 1 FABIANO DE MIRANDA SILVA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2015..pdf: 2913246 bytes, checksum: 6db51db0534a70165a4ca2908589a08c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-02T14:25:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FABIANO DE MIRANDA SILVA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2015..pdf: 2913246 bytes, checksum: 6db51db0534a70165a4ca2908589a08c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-02 / As interfaces de rede estão presentes em uma variedade de sistemas computacionais alimentados à bateria, tais como tais como notebooks, ultrabooks, tablets e smartphones. Considerando-se que a vida útil da bateria é uma limitação, há oportunidades para o gerenciamento de energia reduzindo-se o consumo de energia de interfaces de rede ociosas. Neste trabalho, uma política adaptativa de gerenciamento de energia baseada em time out para interfaces de rede é apresentada, incorporando a estimativa da carga de trabalho e um problema de otimização em tempo de execução, proporcionando economia de energia e desempenho adequado. / Network interfaces are present in a variety of battery powered computer systems, such as notebooks, ultrabooks, tablets and mobile phones. Considering that the battery life is still a constraint, there are opportunities for power management by reducing the power consumption of idle network interfaces. In this work, a dynamic timeout power policy for network interfaces is presented, incorporating workload estimation and a problem optimization at runtime,thus providing power savings and suitable performance.