Global Energy Optimisation for Distributed heterogeneous Embedded Systems
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The GEODES project will provide design techniques, embedded software and accompanying tools needed to face the challenge of allowing long power-autonomy of features rich and connected embedded systems, which are becoming pervasive and whose usage is significantly rising. It approaches this challenge by considering all systems levels, and notably emphasises the distributed system view. GEODES relies on thorough expertise from its consortium, constituted by enabling technologies providers, end users, which are supported by research centers.
The project will address the power consumption issues from a global and coherent point of view at communicating embedded systems, such as handhelds, smart phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), and wireless accessories which are becoming a pervasive fact of every day life. Today's embedded devices support increased functionalities and provide always greater connectivity as illustrated for example by the most advanced UMTS equipments or PDAs. For instance, such accessories commonly integrate camera sensors, which serve video and photo purposes, and WiFi or Bluetooth wireless facilities that may be used to browse the web. Nonetheless, these mobile devices are hugely dependent on their capability to manage their limited battery capacities in order to reach a reasonable autonomy of the individual device. As a result of this increasing complexity, power optimization is no longer confined to the scale of the device but should embrace its environment through the networks they access. Such a challenge is similar (if not identical) to the one encountered for large device sensor networks, defined as groups of HW/SW communicating nodes of heterogeneous capabilities (CPU, memory, ...) In spite of this apparent convergence, power consumption of communication devices is still considered from two distinct but complementary perspectives. The first perspective targets the optimization of users' individual autonomy considering increasingly complex architecture such as multiprocessor heterogeneous architecture. This local approach is often blind with respect to the one considered in sensor network for which the key resource is the network and the optimization criterion is the maximization of network lifetime. As a result, individual concerns lacks in sensor networks' collaborative approach as well as local power optimization appear selfish as regard to the networks. For this reason, the GEODES project offers to investigate the gaps between those two approaches, and aims at overcoming power issues on modern embedded system by globally addressing power optimization aspects at system level. The global and coherent approach proposed by GEODES will provide power awareness (both for the system and for the environment) as well as bring innovative management capabilities for software pieces ranging from the Operating System to applications and protocol layers. For instance, this project will address the generalization of the notion of Quality of Service (QoS), a concept, which is already well known from networks perspectives, to task and task management. In other words, GEODES intends to cover more generally the following aspects:
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| The GEODES project is a joint work of several partners, namely: | |
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Thales Communications, France
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THALES was established in France more than a century ago, THALES is a global electronics company serving Aerospace, Defence and Information Technology markets world-wide. With 9,600 employees in 14 countries, THALES Communications has a solid European base as well as a strong presence in the United States, the world's largest communications market, in Republic of Korea, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Digital technologies, mobile communications, integrated services and the explosion of the Internet offer exciting new business opportunities and are completely changing the face of Telecommunications. THALES has been one of the driving forces behind these changes, and the features and functions that are now available are already part of the company's product offering for government agencies and major organisations. THALES is set to consolidate its world wide leadership position in the communication systems sector. THALES Communications (TCF), part of THALES Land & Joint Systems, is a fully-owned subsidiary of THALES and, through its SBU (Strategic Business Unit) chart, addresses any activity related to telecommunications: mobile radio-communications, ATM networks development, satellite, aeronautical and naval communication, network administration, identification and radio navigation, information systems. The company develops, since years, its activities in civil markets such as civil aviation, radio spectrum monitoring and information technology security. TCF is developing new products, pooling technical expertise or developing joint bids under numerous agreements with our European partners. Two main entities of THALES Communications are participating in the project: the "Advanced Architecture" Laboratory from the Embedded Digital Systems Technical Business Unit (EDS), located in Colombes (France) and the Advanced Information Laboratory of the Thales Architecture Framework. THALES is facing the problem of growing complexity of embedded software systems and management of quality with increased performance. To enhance portability and autonomy high integration is a strong need and requests small size and power. Thales expects from GEODES results a significant contribution to overcome power issues on infrastructure, space and homeland security domain (satellite communications, information system security, .), on terrestrial sensor and network for surveillance missions and aerial observation. Thales expertise is on Power aware OS and distributed middleware, and on networking and MAC level protocols. |
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CETMEF, France
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Institute for Maritime and Inland Waterways of the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning, the CETMEF is the French reference center in maritime and inland fields: it leads directly a certain number of projects of R&D In these fields; it contributes to the elaboration of the technical doctrine; it leadsand directs the action of the other technical establishments of the Ministry in these fields. Its expertise covers the structures for harbor and river, the helps and devices for safety regarding the navigation, the hydraulic phenomena, the telecommunications applied to the maritime needs. CETMEF will collaborate to the MARTEC video demonstrator by providing support in installation in an harbour. |
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Sensaris, France
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Sensaris merges the Internet of Things with social networking for new mobile centric services.
The company leverages low power technologies and electronics integration to provide wireless sensor solutions for daily life applications.
Sensaris has expertise in embedded development, real time transmission, geolocation, networking and web 2.0 user interfaces. Sensaris connects the physical and virtual worlds to provide new user experiences and collective intelligence. In the GEODES project Sensaris is working on integrating geolocation and physiological measurements for firefighter safety application. This will be be based on a new versatile low power board. |
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Martec, France
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The Martec Group is recognized as an expert in developing high debit rate digital and mobile radio-communication systems to be operated in severe operational conditions.
In that field, the Martec group has developed competitive skills in access protocol (TDMA, CSMA, ...), radio interfaces according to 802.1X standard (Wifi, Wimax) and mobility solution providing relevant quality service to operators and minimum latency time compatible with real time data transfer. Thanks to its experience in RF, electronic for onboard applications and real time software, the Martec group is able to modify and adapt off the shelves radio systems to specific customer requirement (frequency modification, power adaptation, modulation, environmental adaptation, packaging). Examples of realizations:
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Thomson R&D, France
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CNRS, France
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The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research) is a government-funded research organization, under the administrative authority of France's Ministry of Research. CNRS research units are spread throughout France, and a large body of permanent researchers, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff works at these units. Laboratories are all on four-year contracts, renewable, with bi-annual evaluation. Two teams of two distinct CNRS laboratories (IRISA and LEAT) are involved in the context of the GEODES project.
IRISA (Institut de Recherche en Informatique et Systèmes Aléatoires, Research Institute in Computer Science and Random Systems) is a research centre located mainly in Rennes that is associated to CNRS but also to INRIA and University of Rennes. IRISA’s missions are « to undertake basic and applied research, to design experimental systems, to ensure technology transfer, to organize international scientific exchanges ». IRISA’s scientific activities cover the following domains: Networks and Systems ; Software Engineering and Symbolic Computing ; Man-Machine Interaction ; Image Processing, Data Management, Knowledge Systems; Simulation and Optimization of Complex Systems. IRISA has a staff of 600 persons, including more than 250 research scientists and 170 PhD students. Industrial relations are strategic for IRISA. In this area, some of the Institute’s initiatives include: Partnerships with large enterprises and SMEs, European projects, Software valorisation and patents. CAIRN (Energy-efficient computing architectures with embedded reconfigurable resources) research team involved in this project is recognized for his expertise in the fields of high-speed and energy-efficient integrated circuits and systems, signal processing for mobile communications, cryptographic and traffic filtering in high-speed network and wireless sensor networks. For more detail on CAIRN team research activities click here or here. The UNSA-LEAT laboratory is a Joint Research Unit associating CNRS and the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis. Research activities are focused around four topics: Modelisation and system design of communicating objects, Computational Electromagnetic Modelling, New Antennas for Telecommunications, Detection and Microwave Imaging. The current staff includes 23 permanent people (Full Professors, CNRS Research Director, Associate & Assistant Professors, Engineers, Technicians, Administrative Assistants) and 15 non-permanent researchers (Ph.D students, post-docs, invited researchers) and the expected staff in January 2008 would be 44 permanent people and 24 non-permanent researchers. The research team of the LEAT has a strong experience in embedded systems, reconfigurable architectures, power reduction techniques and HW/SW/RTOS partitioning. http://leat.unice.fr/index-uk.html CNRS will provide and support two complementary platforms that can be used in the GEODES project. The first one (PowWow developed at IRISA) is a very low power sensor platform including reconfigurable hardware accelerators, while the second one (imote2 from Crossbow inc.) is a high performance wireless sensor node. One objective is also to have an inter-operability between the two platforms, so as to include them in the same sensor network. The LEAT laboratory will investigate the definition of a power management technique specific to wireless sensor networks. This research will benefit from rich past experience in the fields of modelisation / optimisation of power consumption, low power architectures and multiprocessor power management with applications in the field of mobile multimedia applications. Several developments are planned based on the use of processors supporting powerful management techniques like DPM (Dynamic Power Management) and DVFS (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling). Basically we will focus on two processors (Marvell Xscale and ARM1176) and study a visual monitoring application using the Crossbow Imote2 advanced wireless sensor node platform with the goal to define and evaluate the efficiency of power management techniques in realistic operating conditions. The CAIRN team from IRISA laboratory will contribute on link and MAC layers strategies to a global optimization of the energy, and define and optimize advanced signal processing, error detection and correction and medium access (MAC) techniques in order to reduce the transmit power as well as the useless listening of the communication media. In particular, the case of cooperative strategies like cooperative MIMO or relaying techniques will be investigated. Moreover, IRISA will provide to partners the API to develop application software on PowWow. IRISA will also continue the development of PowWow, especially regarding the low-power FPGA and the accurate power estimation. Contacts: Pr. O. Sentieys (IRISA - University of Rennes) sentieys@irisa.fr Dr. C. Belleudy (LEAT – University of Nice) belleudy@unice.fr |
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Infineon, Austria
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Infineon Technologies Austria AG, based in Villach, is a subsidiary of Infineon Technologies AG, a semiconductor company with operations all over the world. The headquarters of the Infineon Technologies Austria AG is located in Villach and currently employs about 2700 (including 900 in R&D) people.
In the fiscal year 2006 (ending September), the company has net sales of 1.093 million EUR. Infineon Austria develops and manufactures semiconductor and systems solutions for automotive, industrial and multi-market sectors as well as communication.Infineon Technologies Austria AG was founded in 1970, with a production volume today of more than 22 billion chips per year. Key silicon technologies are Power MOSFET, IGPT, BCD, BIP, SMART Power, NMOS and CMOS. Infineon Austria has a long year expertise in ICs for wireless communication as well as a deep knowledge of sensor systems and automotive applications: Infineon has more than 25 years experience in automobile electronics. Based on our comprehensive, in-depth knowledge of automotive systems, we offer easy-to-integrate chips and chipsets, enabling our customer to implement innovative in-car applications. Infineon develops, manufactures and markets innovative semiconductor products and complete system-on-chip solutions. In the automotive sector, the company's product range includes power semiconductors, discrete semiconductors, silicon sensors and optoelectronic semiconductors as well as microcontrollers. Infineon automotive products target automobile electronics applications such as power train, comfort management (e.g. light modules, air conditioning), safety management (e.g. anti blocking systems, airbags, stability control) and infotainment. In the mobile communications sector, Infineon offers semiconductors and secure mobile solutions, combining wireless communication technologies, such as wide area wireless networks, local area wireless networks and personal area wireless networks. In the Multimarket sector Infineon offers security technologies like platform security, encryption and biometrics. Major target fields are communication, payment, identification, health care, item management, computing and entertainment. |
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Technical University of Vienna, Austria
| The Institute of Computer Technology (ICT) is part of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the Vienna University of Technology. The main areas of teaching and research are digital logic and microcomputers, computer architecture, data communication and networks, distributed information systems, ASIC development, bus systems, particularly field-bus systems and fault-tolerant systems, as well software engineering, requirements engineering, systems engineering, cognitive automation and autonomic systems. |
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Thales, Netherlands
| Thales Nederland B.V., Division Land & Joint Systems (in short: DLJ-NL) long-term focus for research is in the area of man portable multi-media, wireless networked sensor and communication systems targeted on safety/crisis management applications. DLJ-NLs expertise in this domain is zero-configuration ad-hoc networks providing maximal connectivity for maximum duration, using algorithms to minimize the overall system power consumption in nodes while maintaining robust networks at all times. In GEODES DLJ-NL will mainly be involved in WP3, focusing on the problem of combined transmit power allocation and routing problem in order to increase the network lifetime (the time until the first node in the network runs out of energy. The project results will be exploited by application of the developed algorithms in wireless vehicle and personal communication systems. DLJ-NL is market leader in the area of multimedia vehicle communication systems. Since 2004, DLJ-NL is developing personal communication systems. In addition to direct application to the products that have been developed in the Netherlands, the developed methods can also be applied in international programs. Contact person is Maurits de Graaf, maurits.degraaf@nl.thalesgroup.nl |
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Philips, Netherlands
| Philips Applied Technologies is a contract R&D organization that supports the development of products, applications and technical solutions. With over 1000 in-house experts, we draw on a wide range of competences. Philips has a key interest in the exploitation of wireless networks in the markets of Healthcare, Lifestyle and Lighting applications. In GEODES, we are sharing our broad technical experience and market insights, so that GEODES can advance the state of the art. |
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WMC, Netherlands
| The Twente Institute for Wireless and Mobile Communications, WMC, is a small enterprise which focus on research, development and consultancy in the field of mobile ad-hoc networks. In the Geodes project WMC participates in both, node level energy optimization (WP2) and sensor network power optimization (WP3). In WP2 WMC will bring in its knowledge of an operating environment that dynamically allocates functionality based on the lowest energy consumption. Design time derived energy information is used by a resource manager to derive an optimal mapping of functionality on a multi-processor environment. The knowledge of the energy status of each of the processors can be used to control the voltage and frequency of the processor and so optimizing the power consumption. In WP3 WMC will focus on the research for the development of a power-aware mobile ad-hoc radio network. In ad-hoc radio networks finding an optimal route between nodes requires additional signalling at the cost of the total traffic capacity and power consumption. WMC will focus on Transmit power control to reduce traffic overhead and the overall energy consumption within a radio network. The positive effect on energy consumption is achieved by the fact that transmit power control limits the number of links and reduces the interference within the radio network. |
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Enea, Sweden
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Enea is a global software and services company focused on solutions for communication-driven products. With 40 years of experience Enea is a world leader in the development of software platforms with extreme demands on high-availability and performance. Enea's expertise in real-time operating systems and high availability middleware shortens development cycles, brings down product costs and increases system reliability. Enea's vertical solutions cover telecom handsets and infrastructure, medtech, industrial automation, automotive and mil/aero. Enea has focus and the key interest in the GEODES project to the exploitation of power aware support within the embedded operating system as well as middleware in the markets of handheld wireless systems. In GEODES, Enea is sharing technical experience and market insights, in system integration that is to provide supporting power aware software platforms. |
