Interaction-aware energy management for wireless network cards

Abstract

Wireless Network Interface Cards (WNICs) are part of every portable device, where efficient energy management plays a significant role in extending the device's battery life. The goal of efficient energy management is to match the performance of the WNIC to the network activity shaped by a running application. In the case of interactive applications on mobile systems, network I/O is largely driven by user interactions. Current solutions either require application modifications or lack a sufficient context of execution that is crucial in making accurate and timely predictions. This paper proposes a range of user-interaction-aware mechanisms that utilize a novel approach of monitoring a user's interaction with applications through the capture and classification of mouse events. This approach yields considerable improvements in energy savings and delay reductions of the WNIC, while significantly improving the accuracy, timeliness, and computational overhead of predictions when compared to existing state-of-the-art solutions.