Mobile hotspots cooperation towards better energy efficiency

Power consumption from wireless data communications contributes a significant part for the overall mobile phone platform power. Compared with cellular data transmission, Wi-Fi transmission is more energy-efficient. Nevertheless, there are scenarios where cellular network is the only option to access the Internet for a number of mobile phones because of limited Wi-Fi access. This paper proposes a cooperative approach of using Wi-Fi tethering technique to optimize the overall power consumption. Based on a series of real measurements, we characterize the relationship among signal strength, network bandwidth and power consumption, and point out principles of choosing appropriate mobile hotspot nodes. Then we propose two cooperative algorithms to optimize the overall power consumption, i.e., most suitable hotspot first (MSHF) and most suitable leaf first (MSLF). Simulation results demonstrate that MSHF can acquire 24% power saving and MSLF can achieve up to 29% compared with regular 3G approach.