Power-aware communication for mobile computers

The mobile community has focused on techniques for reducing energy consumption for mobile hosts. These power management techniques typically target communication devices such as wireless network interfaces, aiming to reduce usage, and thus energy consumption, of the particular device itself. We observe that optimization of a single device's energy consumption, without considering the effect of the strategy on the rest of the machine, can have negative consequences. We propose power management techniques addressing mobile host communications that encompass all components of a mobile host in an effort to optimize the total energy consumption. Specifically, we propose runtime adaptation of communication parameters in order to minimize the energy consumed during active data transfer. Information about the network environment is used to drive such adaptations in an effort to compensate for the effect of a dynamic service from the wireless communication device on the energy consumed during data transfer. Our results show that power management can often be achieved while maintaining the QoS provided to the application.