An accurate model for energy efficiency in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

A critical restriction in using mobile electronic devices is the limited battery autonomy. This paper focuses on the energy efficiency of IEEE 802.11 network interface. It proposes an energy consumption model that reflects accurately the back off window dynamics under saturation conditions. In addition, all power state levels used by the IEEE 802.11 standard are considered in the analysis. Numerical and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed IEEE 802.11 energy model is more accurate than previous approaches, and it overcomes the modeling limitations of previous works which are becoming more significant in newer versions of IEEE 802.11 standard. Finally, by providing a clearer insight into the backoff factors, the proposed model lends itself to the use of arbitrary (generic) backoff window schemes, allowing the comparison of the energy efficiency of various alternatives for the backoff window growth.