arXiv Machine Learning

Energy Overhead in Sensor Nodes: Embedded Machine Learning and Data Offloading via Low Power Wide Area Networks

The paper evaluates the energy consumption of sensor nodes in IoT applications, examining the entire pipeline from data acquisition to optional on-device CNN classification and LPWAN transmission using an ESP32‑S3 microcontroller. It compares on‑device inference followed by result transmission with raw data transmission across three environmental monitoring scenarios, varying model architecture and LPWAN technologies (LTE‑M, NB‑IoT, LoRaWAN). Results show that on‑device inference can reduce energy consumption by 1.7× to 6.9× compared to raw data transmission, with a tolerable loss in accuracy, and identify developer‑controllable variables that influence the energy trade‑off.

arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 14

Adaptive AI: Energy Efficient Multi-exit TinyML on Intelligent Vision Systems at the Edge

The paper presents a novel multi‑exit computational scheme for TinyML on an ultra‑low‑power GAP9 SoC, adding confidence‑based gating points to a MobileNetV2 CNN for ImageNet‑100. By allowing inference to stop early, the approach cuts average MAC operations by 41 % (from 313 MMAC to 185 MMAC), reduces inference time by 29 % (49 ms to 35 ms), and saves 24 % in energy (2.1 mJ to 1.6 mJ per frame) with only a ~1 % drop in accuracy. Compared to a state‑of‑the‑art adaptive CNN on the same hardware, the method more than doubles computational efficiency, raising MAC/cycle from 8.1 to 17.2.

By Luca Crupi, Lorenzo Lamberti, Alessandro Giusti, Daniele Palossi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

The Battery Price of edge AI: A study of the Environmental Impact of LLM Inference on Mobile Devices

The paper investigates the environmental impact of running large language models (LLMs) on mobile devices. It evaluates 18 different LLM configurations on two smartphones and a server, measuring energy per token, latency, accuracy, and battery-cycle consumption. Findings reveal that on-device inference is about three times less energy‑efficient than batched server inference, that energy consumption varies non‑monotonically with quantization bit‑width, and that most models are not on the Pareto front of accuracy and energy efficiency. The study concludes that local AI is not inherently more sustainable than cloud inference, with the majority of environmental impact stemming from device embodied carbon.

By \'Edouard Gu\'egain, Tristan Coignion
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 28

On-Device Inference versus Wireless Streaming: Energy-Efficient Multi-Modal Deep Learning for Wearable Cardiovascular Patches

arXiv:2510. 18668v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Wearable cardiovascular sensor patches promise continuous, unobtrusive monitoring, but their tight energy, memory, and compute budgets make it unclear whether physiological signals should be analyzed on the device or streamed to the cloud for processing.

By Mustafa Fuad Rifet Ibrahim, Tunc Alkanat, Felix Manthey, Maurice Meijer, Alexander Schlaefer, Peer Stelldinger
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 24

EnerInfer: Energy-Aware On-Device LLM Inference

arXiv:2606. 23001v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: On-device LLM inference is increasingly attractive for privacy-preserving, reliable, and cost-effective deployment, yet its energy and thermal costs remain a critical bottleneck.

By Bohua Zou, Nian Liu, Binqi Sun, Matteo Mascherin, Debayan Roy, Yutao Liu, Yu Peng, Ning Jia, Haibo Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 20

GQ-FSL: Green Quantized Federated Split Learning Framework for Wireless Edge Networks

The paper introduces GQ-FSL, a green quantized federated split learning framework designed for wireless edge networks. It uses stochastic quantization for both local training and wireless transmissions, allowing asymmetric precision between client and server submodels to balance device energy limits with global convergence. The authors develop energy models and a convergence bound for heterogeneous data, then formulate an optimization problem to set the DNN split point and precision levels, achieving lower energy consumption while meeting latency and accuracy targets.

By Idan Roth, Lutz Lampe
arXiv AI
Sep 25

A Rapid Pipeline for Training and Deploying ML Models on WeBe Band

The paper presents a rapid pipeline for training and deploying machine‑learning models on the WeBe Band, a wrist‑worn wearable device. It automates the creation of hardware‑efficient models, integrates with the Piccolo AI ecosystem, and supports OTA deployment while profiling latency and memory usage. Experimental results show trade‑offs between classical models and lightweight neural networks for real‑time performance on a microcontroller.

By Ehsan Kourkchi, Asmita Asmita, Houman Homayoun, Mahdi Eslamimehr
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 24

BIPPO: Budget-Aware Independent PPO for Energy-Efficient Federated Learning Services

BIPPO (Budget-aware Independent Proximal Policy Optimization) is a multi‑agent reinforcement learning framework designed for energy‑efficient client selection in federated learning (FL) over IoT systems. It addresses infrastructure constraints such as limited resources and device churn, which traditional FL and RL approaches overlook. Evaluated on two image‑classification tasks with non‑IID data, BIPPO improves mean accuracy over non‑RL methods, standard PPO, and IPPO while consuming only a negligible portion of the budget, even as client numbers grow.

By Anna Lackinger, Andrea Morichetta, Pantelis A. Frangoudis, Schahram Dustdar