In this paper, we propose a prototype platform combined with the power management system using, as an auxiliary power storage device, a supercapacitor that can be fast charged and discharged with high power efficiency as well as semi-permanent charge and discharge cycle life. For the proposed platform, we designed a technique which is capable of detecting the state of power cutoff or resumption of power supplied from the solar panel in accordance with physical environment changes through an interrupt attached to the micro-controller was developed. To prevent data loss in a computing environment in which continuous power supply is not guaranteed, we implemented a low-level system software in the micro-controller to transfer program context and data in volatile memory to nonvolatile memory when power supply is cut off. Experimental results shows that supercapacitors effectively supply temporary power as auxiliary power storage devices. Various benchmarks also confirm that power state detection and transfer of program context and data from volatile memory to nonvolatile memory have low overhead.

IoST , Supercapacitor , Power Management , Energy Harvester , Low-Power Embedded System