Buffering… energy for mobile devices: A "store and rendezvous" approach

Abstract

We exploit the traffic shaping potential of network storage and improve energy efficiency for mobile devices through the creation of idle communication intervals. We model the activity patterns between the WIRED/wireless gateway and the wireless battery-powered receiver, and employ a rendezvous mechanism that utilizes periods of inactivity created by the traffic shaping function of the network. In case multiple receivers are simultaneously active, a scheduling algorithm limits overlaps of buffer flushes. Our scenarios are based on the DTN paradigm, however, our approach is not DTN-specific. The presented simulation study involves three main types of Internet traffic (i.e. file transfer, streaming and web browsing) and demonstrates that our proposed scheme achieves significant energy conservation for mobile receivers involving, under most circumstances, only mild performance cost.