[Tinyos-devel] Request for comments: TEP 112

[Prabal Dutta]

Dear TinyOS Developers,

I have been asked to shepherd TEP 112 (Microcontroller Power
Management) through the Community Review process.  This TEP documents
how TinyOS manages the lower power state of a microcontroller in
TinyOS 2.x.  Microcontrollers often have several power states, with
varying power draws, wakeup latencies, and peripheral support. The
microcontroller should always be in the lowest possible power state
that can satisfy application requirements.  Determining this state
accurately requires knowing a great deal about the power state of many
subsystems and their peripherals.  Additionally, state transitions are
common.  Every time a microcontroller handles an interrupt, it moves
from a low power state to an active state, and whenever the TinyOS
scheduler finds the task queue empty it returns the microcontroller to
a low power state.  TinyOS 2.x uses three mechanisms to decide what
low power state it puts a microcontroller into: status and control
registers, a dirty bit, and a power state override.  TEP 112 documents
these mechanisms and how they work, as well as the  basics of
subsystem power management.

Getting feedback from other TinyOS developers is an essential part of
the TEP process and I am looking for volunteers to read the draft TEP
and provide feedback to me via e-mail.  I will then synthesize the
comments and work with the authors to revise the TEP based on your
feedback.  Getting feedback by June 6th would be ideal.  The hard
deadline is June 13th.

The current draft of the TEP is linked from the TinyOS homepage:

http://tinyos.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/tinyos/tinyos-2.x/doc/html/tep112.html

Please contact me by email directly at prabal at cs dot berkeley dot
edu if you have some feedback.  Thanks for your help!

- Prabal