Cooperative Dynamic Voltage Scaling using Selective Slack Distribution in Distributed Real-Time Systems

This work is based on the observation that existing energy management techniques for mobile devices, such as dynamic voltage scaling (DVS), are non-cooperative in the sense that they reduce the energy consumption of a single device, disregarding potential consequences for other constraints (e.g., end-to- end deadlines) and/or other devices (e.g., energy consumption on neighboring devices). This paper argues that energy management in distributed real-time systems has to be end-to-end in nature, requiring a coordinated approach among communicating devices. A cooperative distributed energy management technique (Co-DVS) is proposed that: i) adapts and maintains end-to-end latencies within specified timeliness requirements (deadlines); and ii) enhances energy savings at the nodes with the highest pay-off factors that represent the relative benefits or significance of conserving energy at a node. The proposed technique employs a feedback-based approach to dynamically distribute end-to-end slack among the devices based on their pay-off factors.