An adaptive power saving mechanism in IEEE 802.11 wireless IP networks

Reducing energy consumption in mobile hosts (MHs) is one of the most critical issues in wireles/mobile networks. IP paging protocol at network layer and power saving mechanism (PSM) at link layer are two core technologies to reduce the energy consumption of MHs. First, we investigate the energy efficiency of the current IEEE 802.11 power saving mechanism (PSM) when IP paging protocol is deployed over IEEE 802.11 networks. The result reveal that the current IEEE 802.11 PSM with a fixed wake-up interval (i.e., the static PSM) exhibits a degraded performance when it is integrated with IP paging protocol. Therefore, we propose an adaptive power saving mechanism in IEEE 802.11-based wireless IP networks. Unlike the static PSM, the adaptive PSM adjusts the wake-up interval adaptively depending on the session activity at IP layer. Specifically, the MH estimates the idle periods for incoming sessions based on the exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) scheme and sets its wake-up interval dynamically by considering the estimated idle period and paging delay bound. For performance evaluation, we have conducted comprehensive simulations and compared the total cost and energy consumption, which are incurred in IP paging protocol in conjunction with various power saving mechanisms: The static PSM, the adaptive PSM, and the optimum PSM. Simulation results show that the adaptive PSM provides a closer performance to the optimum PSM than the static PSM.