Adaptive packet relocator in wireless Network-on-Chip (WiNoC)

Abstract

In wireless Network-on-Chip (WiNoC), radio frequency (RF) transceivers account for a significant power consumption, particularly its transmitter, out of its total communication energy. In current WiNoC architectures, high transmission power consumption with constant maximum power suffers from significant energy and load imbalance among RF modules which leads to hotspot formation, thus affecting the reliability requirement of the network system. This paper proposes an energy-aware adaptive packet relocator mechanism, in which, based on transmission energy consumption and predefined energy threshold, packets are routed to adjacent transmitter for communication with receiver radio hub, aiming an optimized energy distribution in WiNoC. The proposed strategy alone achieves total communication energy savings of about 8%.