A holistic approach for energy efficient proximity alert on Android

The proximity alert service on Android is important as an enabler of smart cities, however, it is also limited in this role due to its excessive energy expenditure. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of an energy-efficient proximity alert service for both high-precision and low-precision applications. Our methods utilize the distance to the point of interest and the user´s transportation mode in order to dynamically determine the location-sensing interval and the location providers (GPS or Network) to be used. We implement our methods as a middleware service in the Android open source project. Our service for realistic scenarios, on average, increases the battery life time of baseline proximity alert in Android by 62% for high-precision and 71% for low-precision applications.