User Insensible Sliding Firmware Update Technique for Flash-Area/Time-Cost Reduction toward Low-Power Embedded Software Replacement

In applications where firmware updates are frequent, such as edge devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) networks with embedded systems, the update process is considered a significant role in improving device performance. This paper proposed a user insensible sliding firmware update technique based on a function block that reduces flash memory usage by handling only part of function blocks instead of the entire firmware, and device's pause time by allowing the user to use the device between function block updates. The proposed technique was evaluated using the target board with the actual ARM core. As a result, the flash memory usage overhead was reduced by 63.64%, paused minimum time was reduced by 79.98% at once update process, and energy consumption reduced by 78.78%. We show that user insensible sliding firmware update has great potential for implementing IoT networks that change behavior quickly by being aware of the environment.