A Power Consumption Analysis Technique Using UML-Based Design Models in Embedded Software Development

Although the power consumption of embedded system depends on the operation of hardware devices, software behaviors give great effect to the power consumption because of its functionality and complexity growth. This paper proposes a power consumption estimation technique using design models of software to support energy-efficient embedded software development. Even though code-based power analysis techniques have been proposed, these techniques have demerits that the analysis time is long and feedback is not easy. Our proposed technique makes use of UML behavior models for the power consumption analysis in order to overcome the demerits of code-based analysis. When comparing with the existing code-based analysis, our technique can provide the power analysis result at earlier phase than implementation. Therefore, software engineer can apply our technique to select energy-efficient design decisions in embedded software development process.