Temperature-Power Consumption Relationship and Hot-Spot Migration for FPGA-Based System

Heat emission and temperature control in an electronic device is known to be highly correlated to power consumption as well as to equipment´s reliability. Within this context, this paper discusses a possible solution to restrict processing component´s heat emission in FPGA-based system (e.g., Cognitive Radio (CR) equipment). It also describes the implementation, on reconfigurable FPGA based circuit, of a digital thermal sensor, analyzes the applicability of local heat estimations, and empirically describes the temperature-power consumption relationship in a dynamically reconfigurable FPGA platform. Finally, discussions are conducted on the decision making issues related to the use of such sensors to enable ``hot-spot´´ migration in CR equipment.