Optimized CPU frequency scaling on Android devices based on foreground running application

Abstract

When it comes to portable devices, battery life is a very crucial aspect. Battery life of a mobile device can be improved by several techniques. One such technique is the effective management of the operating voltage and frequency of the processor. Linux provides a utility, named cpufreq, to dynamically scale CPU frequency on the fly. Since Android operating system is based on Linux, the cpufreq utility can be used to scale the CPU frequency of the portable devices. To decide when and how much frequency should be scaled, cpufreq governors are used. This paper proposes the basis for a new cpufreq governor called appspace, to improve battery life by considering not only instantaneous CPU usage, but also foreground running application on the device. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media.