An iterative algorithm for battery-aware task scheduling on portable computing platforms

We consider battery powered portable systems which either have field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) or voltage and frequency scalable processors as their main processing element. An application is modeled in the form of a precedence task graph at a coarse level of granularity. We assume that, for each task in the task graph, several unique design-points are available which correspond to different hardware implementations for FPGAs and different voltage-frequency combinations for processors. It is assumed that performance and total power consumption estimates for each design-point are available for any given portable platform, including the power usage of peripheral components, such as memory and display. We present an iterative heuristic algorithm which finds a sequence of tasks along with an appropriate design-point for each task, such that a deadline is met and the amount of battery energy used is as small as possible. A detailed illustrative example, along with a case study of a real-world application of a robotic arm controller which demonstrates the usefulness of our algorithm, is also presented.