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Abstract

Low-power embedded devices are widely used in sensor networks, monitoring systems, and industrial applications. These devices typically rely on internal flash memory, where storage is constrained by bootloaders, communication stacks, and other software. Adding external memory increases cost and energy consumption, making efficient memory utilization essential. This article presents key design concepts for developing an efficient, lightweight, and reliable embedded filesystem. It introduces an improved version of the configurable flash filesystem (CFFS), designed to maximize memory utilization, minimize flash wear, and support portability across hardware platforms and operating systems. Reliability mechanisms integrated into CFFS are also discussed. We compare CFFS with widely used low-power embedded filesystems—LittleFS, SPIFFS, and FDS—highlighting its advantages in memory efficiency and reduced flash memory wear. Experimental results demonstrate that CFFS achieves up to 99% memory utilization while significantly reducing erase operations.

Details

1009240
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Title
A Lightweight and Configurable Flash Filesystem for Low-Power Devices
Author
Kachman Ondrej 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Malík, Peter 1 ; Baláž Marcel 2 ; Majer Libor 3 ; Gyepes Gábor 3 

 Department of Intelligent Digital Systems, Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská Cesta 9, 845 07 Bratislava, Slovakia; [email protected] (P.M.); [email protected] (M.B.) 
 Department of Intelligent Digital Systems, Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská Cesta 9, 845 07 Bratislava, Slovakia; [email protected] (P.M.); [email protected] (M.B.), R-DAS, s.r.o., Research and Development Company, Ilkovičova 2, 842 16 Bratislava, Slovakia; [email protected] (L.M.); [email protected] (G.G.) 
 R-DAS, s.r.o., Research and Development Company, Ilkovičova 2, 842 16 Bratislava, Slovakia; [email protected] (L.M.); [email protected] (G.G.) 
Volume
15
Issue
2
First page
22
Number of pages
18
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
Place of publication
Basel
Country of publication
Switzerland
Publication subject
e-ISSN
20799268
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2025-04-11
Milestone dates
2025-03-05 (Received); 2025-04-09 (Accepted)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
11 Apr 2025
ProQuest document ID
3223913335
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/lightweight-configurable-flash-filesystem-low/docview/3223913335/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2025-10-09
Database
ProQuest One Academic