PSBP: Power Saving Backoff Prediction in IEEE802.11

Batteries are a primary resource in wireless networks for many mobile devices. Minimizing energy consumption without affecting communication activities is crucial to prolong the lifetime and improve the robustness of the wireless connection. One effective way to reduce energy consumption is to put the entire, or part of the system in a low power state whenever possible. A power saving protocol that uses network information to estimate the congestion level, allows stations to predict the time they will wait before accessing the channel in IEEE802.11. By estimating the time a station will wait to access the channel, the station does not need to stay awake sampling the medium and instead can enter a low power sleep mode for a portion of this time, for particular usage scenarios. Adopting this scheme allows considerable power savings without any adverse effect on network throughput