Worst-Case Energy Consumption Aware Compile-Time Checkpoint Placement for Energy Harvesting Systems

National audienceA large and increasing number of Internet-of-Things devices are not equipped with batteries and harvest energy from their environment. Many of them cannot be physically accessed once they are deployed (embedded in civil engineering structures, sent in the atmosphere or deep in the oceans). When they run out of energy, they stop executing and wait until the energy level reaches a threshold. Programming such devices is challenging in terms of ensuring memory consistency and guaranteeing forward progress. Previous work has proposed to insert checkpoints in the program so that execution can resume from well-defined locations. In this work, we propose to define these checkpoint locations based on worst-case energy consumption of code sections, with limited additional effort for programmers. As our method is based upon worst-case energy consumption, we can guarantee memory consistency and forward progress