Shepherd Nova: A Public Testbed for Rigorous Experiments Under Repeatable Energy-Harvesting Conditions

Publikation: Beitrag in Buch/Konferenzbericht/Sammelband/GutachtenBeitrag in KonferenzbandBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

  • Kai Geissdoerfer - , Nessie Circuits (Autor:in)
  • Ingmar Splitt - , Technische Universität Darmstadt (Autor:in)
  • Matthias Sokolowski - , Technische Universität Darmstadt (Autor:in)
  • Carsten Herrmann - , Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) (Autor:in)
  • Jonas Kubicki - , Technische Universität Darmstadt (Autor:in)
  • Jasper De Winkel - , Technische Universität Delft (Autor:in)
  • Marco Zimmerling - , Technische Universität Darmstadt (Autor:in)

Abstract

Public testbeds are essential for replicable experiments and meaningful comparisons on shared physical infrastructure. While many testbeds exist for battery-powered Internet of Things (IoT) systems, there is a lack of public testbeds for observing and profiling the distributed operation of energy-harvesting IoT systems, including battery-free devices. We fill this gap and present Shepherd Nova, the first public testbed designed to support experiments under repeatable energy-harvesting conditions. Shepherd Nova uses field-recorded harvesting data to supply power to devices, consistently replicating real-world spatio-temporal energy availability across multiple experiments. Its virtual power source supports diverse ambient energy sources, harvesting circuitry, and energy storage devices. Moreover, Shepherd Nova provides services like general-purpose input/output (GPIO) tracing, power profiling, and serial output logging, all of which can run synchronously and with high resolution. Sub-microsecond synchronization enables precise correlation between these observations and emulated energy-harvesting conditions, offering unprecedented insights into distributed energy-harvesting IoT systems. In this paper, we describe Shepherd Nova's design, characterize its performance, and demonstrate its capabilities through controlled experiments and an example test case. To access the testbed, documentation as well as open-source harvesting data, hardware designs, and code, visit https://testbed.nes-lab.org/.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
TitelMobiSys 2025 - Proceedings of the 23rd ACM international Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
Herausgeber (Verlag)Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Seiten236-248
Seitenumfang13
ISBN (elektronisch)9798400714535
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 25 Sept. 2025
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Konferenz

Titel23rd ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
KurztitelMobiSys 2025
Veranstaltungsnummer23
Dauer23 - 27 Juni 2025
Webseite
OrtHilton Anaheim
StadtAnaheim
LandUSA/Vereinigte Staaten

Schlagworte

Schlagwörter

  • battery-free systems, distributed debugging, energy harvesting, experiments, GPIO tracing, intermittency, internet of things, power profiling, repeatability, serial logging, testbed, time synchronization