Advances in battery technology have not kept pace with rapidly growing energy demands. Most laptops, handheld PCs, and cell phones use batteries that take anywhere from 1.5 to 4 hours to fully charge but can run on this charge for only a few hours.

The battery has thus become a key control parameter in the energy management of portables. To meet the stringent power budget of these devices, researchers have explored various architectural, hardware, software, and system-level optimizations to minimize the energy consumed per useful computation. Research in batteryaware optimization is now moving from stand-alone devices to networks of wireless devices?specifically, ad hoc and distributed sensor networks.