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Data-driven Software-based Power Estimation for Embedded Devices

Operating Systems 2025-05-22 v2

Abstract

Energy measurement of computer devices, which are widely used in the Internet of Things (IoT), is an important yet challenging task. Most of these IoT devices lack ready-to-use hardware or software for power measurement. In this paper, we propose an easy-to-use approach to derive a software-based energy estimation model with external low-end power meters based on data-driven analysis. Our solution is demonstrated with a Jetson Nano board and Ruideng UM25C USB power meter. Various machine learning methods combined with our smart data collection & profiling method and physical measurement are explored. Periodic Long-duration measurements are utilized in the experiments to derive and validate power models, allowing more accurate power readings from the low-end power meter. Benchmarks were used to evaluate the derived software-power model for the Jetson Nano board and Raspberry Pi. The results show that 92\% accuracy can be achieved by the software-based power estimation compared to measurement. A kernel module that can collect running traces of utilization and frequencies needed is developed, together with the power model derived, for power prediction for programs running in a real environment. Our cost-effective method facilitates accurate instantaneous power estimation, which low-end power meters cannot directly provide.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.02764,
  title  = {Data-driven Software-based Power Estimation for Embedded Devices},
  author = {Haoyu Wang and Xinyi Li and Ti Zhou and Man Lin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.02764},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:27:23.065Z