Experimental Analysis of Energy Consumption in Video Streaming Services

With more mobile devices in the world than the global population and with growing environmental concerns, the energy consumption of mobile devices is becoming an important topic. At the same time, video streaming represents the most popular service on the Internet in terms of traffic volume, and video content is increasingly consumed by users on mobile devices. Therefore, in this study, we design and conduct an experimental campaign to measure the energy consumption of mobile devices and their wireless network modules in the context of video streaming services. We compare the energy consumption for five video streaming platforms over multiple radio access technologies (WiFi, 3G, 4G, and 5G), using commercial networks as well as a private cellular network set-up. Our results show a significant variation in terms of energy consumption between video platforms, with very different behaviors appearing at the inspection of the collected traces. We also show that the 5G technology represents, at least for now, the most energy-hungry solution at the user level. Finally, we test the different video quality options available for the different platforms, showing once again a very heterogeneous behavior in terms of power consumption patterns.