SHF: Small: Circuit Support for Maintaining the Continuous-power Abstraction in Energy Harvesting Systems

SHF：小型：用于维持能量收集系统中的连续功率抽象的电路支持

• 批准号: 2240744
• 负责人: Matthew Hicks
• 金额: $ 45万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-10-01 至 2026-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2240744&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Small; Circuit; Support; Maintaining

Technical advances in the design of small, low-power computing hardware alongside rapidly expanding network capacity are driving an explosion of ubiquitous, connected Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. IoT systems have the potential to transform environmental, transportation, and healthcare industries. Unfortunately, batteries limit the potential societal impact of IoT devices due to their size, weight, cost, maintenance requirement, and flammability. Without shedding batteries from IoT systems, high-density, million device, “deploy-and-forget” deployments made possible by ultra-small computing devices will never happen. Despite a decade of research on replacing batteries with energy harvesting, energy harvesting systems are not capable of being deployed in society. The core deployment challenge is the programmer: harvested energy is scarce and unpredictable, forcing batteryless systems to operate intermittently as power is available despite dramatically changing power conditions and common-case power failures. The human mind cannot reason accurately about such complexity. Making the dream of high-density, million device, “deploy-and-forget” energy harvesting device deployments possible requires hardware support that restores the abstraction of a continuously powered device to programmers, alleviating them of such complex reasoning.The work in this project restores the continuous power paradigm developers are trained for through transparent, low-level hardware mechanisms. Restoring the continuous power abstraction enables deployable and performant batteryless system design, opening the door for transformative industrial- and society-level ubiquitous computing and smart dust systems. The project aims to answer three questions: What modifications can one make to the energy harvesting and management hardware to provide a continuous-power environment for software? What opportunities exist when one decouples hardware operation from power-related software interruptions? What benefits exist when one allows software to inform hardware of its energy needs? The project bridges the gap between constant-power and batteryless systems through: an energy-aware harvester architecture that dynamically responds to changes in power supply and demand to efficiently supply a consistent power level for computation; hardware support for sustaining system and peripheral functionality across power cycles without software intervention; and a hybrid design that tunes the hardware to software’s needs, maximizing responsiveness while minimizing wasted energy. The team introduces hands-on, batteryless system development projects for both undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

小型、低功耗计算硬件设计的技术进步以及网络容量的快速扩展正在推动无处不在的互联物联网 (IoT) 设备的爆炸式增长。物联网系统有潜力改变环境、交通和医疗保健行业。不幸的是，由于电池的尺寸、重量、成本、维护要求和易燃性，电池限制了物联网设备的潜在社会影响。如果不从物联网系统中释放电池，超小型计算设备所实现的高密度、百万台设备、“部署后忘记”部署将永远不会发生。尽管用能量收集替代电池的研究已经进行了十年，但能量收集系统还无法在社会中部署。核心部署挑战是程序员：所收集的能量稀缺且不可预测，尽管电源条件发生了巨大变化并且出现了常见的电源故障，但无电池系统仍会在有电源可用时间歇性运行。人类思维无法准确地推理这种复杂性。要实现高密度、百万台设备、“部署后忘记”能量收集设备部署的梦想，需要硬件支持，为程序员恢复持续供电设备的抽象，减轻他们的复杂推理。该项目中的工作恢复了开发人员通过透明、低级硬件机制接受培训的持续供电范例。恢复连续电源抽象可实现可部署和高性能的无电池系统设计，为变革性的工业和社会级普适计算和智能灰尘系统打开大门。该项目旨在回答三个问题：可以对能量收集和管理硬件进行哪些修改才能为软件提供持续供电环境？当将硬件操作与与电源相关的软件中断分离时，存在哪些机会？当允许软件将其能源需求告知硬件时，会带来什么好处？该项目通过以下方式弥合了恒定功率和无电池系统之间的差距： 能量感知采集器架构，可动态响应电源和需求的变化，以有效地为计算提供一致的功率水平；硬件支持在整个电源周期内维持系统和外设功能，无需软件干预；混合设计可根据软件的需求调整硬件，最大限度地提高响应能力，同时最大限度地减少能源浪费。该团队为计算机科学、计算机工程和电气工程领域的本科生和研究生介绍了动手实践的无电池系统开发项目。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。