Investigating the energy consumption of a wireless network interface in an ad hoc networking environment

TLDR

Energy‑aware network protocol design requires knowledge of actual wireless interface consumption, yet little practical data exists for common interfaces and device specifications are unhelpful. The study measures the energy consumption of an IEEE 802.11 wireless interface in an ad hoc network through a series of experiments. The authors present linear equations that compute energy usage for sending, receiving, and discarding broadcast and point‑to‑point packets of various sizes. The results suggest implications for protocol design and evaluation in ad hoc networks.

Abstract

Energy-aware design and evaluation of network protocols requires knowledge of the energy consumption behavior of actual wireless interfaces. But little practical information is available about the energy consumption behavior of well-known wireless network interfaces and device specifications do not provide information in a form that is helpful to protocol developers. This paper describes a series of experiments which obtained detailed measurements of the energy consumption of an IEEE 802.11 wireless network interface operating in an ad hoc networking environment. The data is presented as a collection of linear equations for calculating the energy consumed in sending, receiving and discarding broadcast and point-to-point data packets of various sizes. Some implications for protocol design and evaluation in ad hoc networks are discussed.