Reducing power consumed by a PC-based server in an Internet-based data acquisition system using a novel server agent

The work attempts to reduce the power consumption of a personal computer (PC)-based server of an Internet-based data acquisition system using a novel server agent. An Internet-based data acquisition system requires at least one PC as the central server. The system needs to be run for a long time. If few data are transferred, the server stays at an almost idle state. However, keeping the server running without doing anything wastes power. Reducing this unnecessary power consumption by a PC-based server and further reducing the power consumption of an entire system are the goals of this work. This work is based on a microcontroller-based device. The novel microcontroller-based device in this work is called a Server Agent. This agent receives data from clients while the original PC-based server is off. After the amount of data transferred exceeds a certain limit, the Server Agent powers on the PC-based server and dumps the data to the PC-based server. The Server Agent will power off the PC-based server again once all data are dumped. The power consumed by the Server Agent is <;1 watt, much lower than that consumed by the PC-based server of 60-110 watts. This process reduces system power consumption.