A framework for estimating the energy consumption induced by a distributed system's architectural style

Abstract

The architectural style used in a software system is an important factor in satisfying its quality requirements. In battery-powered environments, such as mobile and pervasive systems, efficiency with respect to energy consumption is often an important quality requirement. In this paper, we present a framework that facilitates early estimation of the energy consumption induced by an architectural style in a distributed system, and enables an engineer to use energy consumption estimates along with other quality attributes in determining the most appropriate style for a given distributed application. We apply the framework to three architectural styles, and evaluate it for precision and accuracy using a middleware platform that supports the implementation of those styles. In a large number of application scenarios, our framework exhibited excellent precision, in that it was consistently able to correctly rank the styles and estimate the relative differences in their energy costs. Moreover, the framework has also proven to be accurate: its estimates were within 7% of each style implementation's actual energy cost.