Energy management architecture for multimedia applications in battery powered devices

This paper describes energy management architecture for multimedia applications in battery powered devices to dynamically control the energy consumption of the device with an effort to increase the battery life. The architecture is divided into two parts, a notification manager and a controller. The notification manager is a generic block and is implemented as part of the system software. It consists of a module that continuously monitors the battery state and sends out notifications. The controller is application specific. The notification manager issues notifications to the multimedia applications to operate under different energy modes based on an energy management algorithm proposed in the paper. The paper describes the implementation of the architecture for multimedia applications as they are the most energy consuming components in a handheld device. Experimental results provided at the end of the paper show the effectiveness of the described architecture. The notification manager also incorporates prediction and sensory modules to utilize the real world scenarios and achieve maximum energy saving.