MicroLEAP: Energy-aware Wireless Sensor Platform for Biomedical Sensing Applications

Extended system lifetime is a critical requirement for wearable sensor platforms. However, these platforms must also accommodate local data processing, data storage, and broadband wireless communications. Since compact battery storage capacity is constrained, there exists a fundamental tradeoff between energy optimization and performance. Furthermore, biomedical transducers may also demand high peak power dissipation during active operations. Energy management, therefore, must be introduced through new hardware architecture and enabled through software in the overall system design. To effectively optimize energy dissipation for biomedical sensing applications, a new wearable sensor platform, MicroLEAP, has been developed. The MicroLEAP platform supports per-task real-time energy profiling to permit adaptive applications that select platform components to best match dynamically-varying measurement requirements. MicroLEAP design, implementation, and example of energy-aware operation are demonstrated.