Practical power modeling of data transmission over 802.11g for wireless applications

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that a significant part of the overall energy consumption of battery-powered mobile devices is caused by network data transmission. Power models that describe the power consumption behavior of the network data transmission are therefore an essential tool in estimating the battery lifetime and in minimizing the energy usage of mobile devices. In this paper, we present a simple and practical power model for data transmission over an 802.11g WLAN and show its accuracy against physical data measured from three popular mobile platforms, Maemo, Android and Symbian. Our model estimates the energy usage based on the data transmission flow characteristics which are easily available on all the platforms without modifications to low-level software components or hardware. Based on our measurements and experimentation on real networks we conclude that our model is easy to apply and of adequate accuracy.