Energy measurements campaign for positioning methods on State-of-the-Art smartphones

Mobile phones have been undergoing a breathtaking evolution over the last years, starting from simple devices with only voice services, nowadays they are referred as smartphones, powerful devices able to offer appealing services. One of the services that has recently become popular is referred as Location Based Services that use contextual and location information to enhance mobile user experience. As a basic assumption, this kind of services needs to be continuously aware of the phone's location. The challenge emerges from the trade-off needed between the location precision and the energy consumption of the positioning methods, the most precise being also the energy-hungriest. This paper presents the results of an extensive energy measurements campaign that was conducted on different sensors and positioning methods on a smartphone. Results will help researchers and developers to design energy efficient and more accurate continuous location tracking algorithms to support Location Based Services.