Assessing and Modeling the Energy Consumption of PoE-Powered WiFi Access Point

We believe that studying the energy consumption behavior of access points before focusing on energy-saving methods is worthwhile. This approach allows us to identify the parameters that can affect energy consumption and explore potential optimizations for current and future WiFi infrastructure deployments. To do this, in this paper, we first present a measurement technique based on the Power over Ethernet principle to accurately assess the power consumption of access points. Secondly, we propose a general model capable of predicting or estimating the impact of network traffic characteristics on access point power consumption. The validity of the proposed power model is confirmed through the utilization of linear regression analysis. The results obtained from this analysis demonstrate low mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of 1.65% and 1.16% for the proposed model. These findings provide strong evidence supporting the accuracy and effectiveness of the power model. Based on our theoretical analysis and the accuracy of our power measurement technique, we demonstrate that optimal selection of available bandwidths can significantly enhance the energy efficiency of access points during data communication.