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Power is increasingly becoming a design constraint for embedded systems. Dynamic Power Management algorithms enable optimal utilization of hardware at runtime. The present work attempts to arrive at an optimal policy to reduce the energy consumption at system level, by selectively placing components into low power states. A new, simple algorithm for power management systems involving multiple requests and services, proposed here, has been obtained from stochastic queuing models. The proposed policy is event driven and based on a Deterministic Markov Nonstationary Policy model (DMNSP). The proposed policy has been tested using a Java-based event driven simulator. The test results show that there is about 23% minimum power saving over the existing schemes with less impact on performance or reliability.

A low input step-up DC/DC converter and power manager in 0.18-μm CMOS process is presented. The proposed converter can work with the input voltage as low as 20 mV. The extremely low input voltage makes it suitable for energy harvesting and power management. Four logic controlled outputs provide the best voltage for various applications to accommodate low power design requirements. A low current low dropout regulator (LDO) is utilized to provide a regulated 2.2 V output for powering low power processors or other low power integrated circuit (ICs). Reserve energy on the storage capacitor CSTORE provides power when the input voltage source is unavailable, thus prolongs the life of the system and expands the application range. Extremely low quiescent current (6 μA) and high efficiency design (64%@300 μA load current) ensure the fastest possible charge times of the output reservoir capacitor. This work provides a complete power management solution for wireless sensing and data acquisition.