Energy-Aware Pattern Framework: The Energy-Efficiency Challenge for Embedded Systems from a Software Design Perspective

Driven by the success of Internet of Things, the number of embedded systems is constantly increasing. Reducing power consumption and improving energy efficiency are among the key challenges for battery-powered embedded systems. Additionally, threats like climate change clearly illustrate the need for systems with low resource usages. Due to the impact of software applications on the system’s power consumption, it is important to optimize the software design even in early development phases. The important role of the software layer is often overlooked because energy consumption is commonly associated with the hardware layer. As a result, existing research mainly focuses on energy optimization at the hardware level, while only limited research has been published on energy optimization at the software design level. This work presents a novel approach to propose an energy-aware software design pattern framework description, which takes power consumption and time behavior into account. We evaluate the expressiveness of the framework by defining design patterns, which use elaborated power-saving strategies for various hardware components to reduce the overall energy consumption of an embedded system. Furthermore, we introduce a dimensionless numerical efficiency factor to make energy savings quantifiable and a comparison for design patterns applied in various use cases possible.