Energy Consumption Management for Dense Wi-Fi Networks

Wi-Fi networks lack energy consumption management mechanisms. In particular, during nighttime periods, the energy waste may be significant, since all Access Points (APs) are kept switched on even though there is minimum or null traffic demand. The fact that more than 80% of all wireless traffic is originated or terminated indoor, and served by Wi-Fi, has led the scientific community to look into energy saving mechanisms for Wi-Fi networks. State of the art solutions address the problem by switching APs on and off based on manually inserted schedules or by analyzing real-time traffic demand. The first are vendor specific; the second may induce frequent station (STA) handoffs, which has an impact on network performance. The lack of implementability of solutions is also a shortcoming in most works.We propose an algorithm, named Energy Consumption Management Algorithm (ECMA), that learns the daytime and nighttime periods of the Wi-Fi network. ECMA was designed having in mind its implementability over legacy Wi-Fi equipment. At daytime, the radio interfaces of the AP (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) are switched on and off automatically, according to the traffic demand. At nighttime, clusters of APs, covering the same area, are formed, leaving one AP always switched on for basic coverage and the redundant APs swichted off to maximize energy savings, while avoiding coverage and performance hampering. Simulation results show energy savings of up to 50% are possible using the ECMA algorithm.