[En-Nut-Discussion] Power Consumption - TCP/IP

[amit khandelwal]

Hello All,

Project Description:
I have modified the IP layer of ethernut to add a 4 byte mac. This
will enable us to give hop by hop authentication. I am using the
encryption algorithms written by the folks of TinySec. I have
integrated that with the NutOS environment for my project. I have
tested this with linux kernel 2.4 and written module which captures
the packet at the IP layer ( IP_PRE_ROUTING and IP_POST_ROUTING).

1. Encryption at the application layer.
2. Authentication at the IP layer.

Earlier we were planning to implement IPSec but later we decided to
port TinySec like environment for Nut/OS. Now I am planning to figure
out If I can somehow measure the power consumption by the TCP/IP stack
of Nut/OS. There is a paper Powerscope (CMU) which suggest the use of
digital multimeter and adding their API's but I dont have access to
the expensive hardware and so I am not planning to go that way. I was
wondering if anybody could offer me any suggestions as to how can I go
about doing that. I am not sure what is watchdog timer used for. Can I
use that?? I was going thro' the data sheets of Atmel and it gives me
the amount of power consumed by one instruction. Any suggestions on
how I can get the number of instruction executed....

(Transmission cost + CPU Cost) = Total Cost.

Else the other approach that we have thought is by trying to connect a
battery and see for how long it can run....

We are in the initial stages. Any suggestions/pointers.

Thanks for all the help.

Sincerely,
Amit Khandelwal