  For microprocessors used in real-time embedded systems, minimizing power
consumption is difficult due to the timing constraints. Dynamic voltage scaling
(DVS) has been incorporated into modern microprocessors as a promising
technique for exploring the trade-off between energy consumption and system
performance. However, it remains a challenge to realize the potential of DVS in
unpredictable environments where the system workload cannot be accurately
known. Addressing system-level power-aware design for DVS-enabled embedded
controllers, this paper establishes an analytical model for the DVS system that
encompasses multiple real-time control tasks. From this model, a feedback
control based approach to power management is developed to reduce dynamic power
consumption while achieving good application performance. With this approach,
the unpredictability and variability of task execution times can be attacked.
Thanks to the use of feedback control theory, predictable performance of the
DVS system is achieved, which is favorable to real-time applications. Extensive
simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach.
