Transient computing for energy harvesting systems: A survey

Battery-powered, ultra-low-power embedded devices are often limited by the size and maintenance costs of batteries, giving rise to battery-less devices and the emergence of energy harvesting systems. Energy harvesters obtain enough energy from the environment in order to satisfy program execution. However, the difference in the harvesting source and the size of the energy storage makes the program not execute continuously due to frequent interruptions due to power failures. Frequent power failures make the program lose volatile state, inconsistent data, and non-termination, so the energy harvesting system has to preserve the storage of volatile logic, maintain data consistency, and avoid non-termination. In this paper, we show the transient computing techniques for energy harvesting systems. We hope that this research will provide researchers with insights into transient computing and help them address the remaining challenges.