Power Saving in Wireless LANs by Adapting the Listen Interval

Abstract

We are increasingly relying on wireless networks to access different Internet and Intranet services. With the current battery technologies, the manufacturers of portable wireless devices have to compromise between portability and battery life. The IEEE 802.11 standard includes a power saving mode (PSM), which is fixed and does not adapt to the varying traffic patterns. In this paper, we propose an enhancement to the standard PSM through the implementation of an adaptive listen interval that changes in accordance with traffic patterns. Our simulation tests show that the proposed technique provided better power saving compared to the standard PSM.