Analysis of Context-Aware Network Selection Schemes for Power Savings

Socio-technical developments in computing have resulted in the emergence of innovative mobile systems which exploit the information available on the Internet to optimize the performance of hosted applications and services. One of the challenges in the real-time critical mobile applications such as remote patient monitoring is to ensure optimal power usage. We consider herewith a case, where context-aware middleware hosted on the mobile device uses wireless networks availability data obtained from the remote QoS Information Service to selectively turn on the network interface and handover to the wireless access network which results in the optimal power consumption on the mobile device. We evaluate the power savings potential of the proposed concept using close-to-real life simulations and compare the results with the network selection mechanism which uses only information locally available on the mobile device. The results obtained from the simulations encourage applying the proposed concept in real operational remote patient monitoring systems.