EMSIM: an energy simulation framework for an embedded operating system

Modern embedded systems are typically built using an operating system (OS) (frequently an embedded OS). As energy consumption has become an important issue in the design of embedded systems (e.g. mobile computing and wireless communication devices), various techniques have been developed for the design of energy-efficient embedded software. In OS-driven embedded systems, the OS has a significant impact on the system's energy consumption directly (energy consumption associated with the execution of the OS functions and services), as well as indirectly (interaction of the OS with the application software). As a first step towards designing energy-efficient OS-based embedded systems, it is important to develop methodologies to analyze the energy consumption of the embedded OS. We present, in this work, an energy simulation framework that can be used to analyze the energy consumption characteristics of an embedded system featuring the embedded Linux OS running on the StrongARM processor.