Extend your journey: Introducing signal strength into location-based applications

Reducing the communication energy is essential to facilitate the growth of emerging mobile applications. In this paper, we introduce signal strength into location-based applications to reduce the energy consumption of mobile devices for data reception. First, we model the problem of data fetch scheduling, with the objective of minimizing the energy required to fetch location-based information without adversely impacting user experience. Then, we propose a dynamic-programming algorithm to solve the fundamental problem and prove its optimality in terms of energy savings. We also provide an optimality condition with respect to signal strength fluctuations. Finally, based on the algorithm, we consider implementation issues. We have also developed a virtual tour system integrated with existing web applications to validate the practicability of the proposed concept. The results of experiments conducted based on real-world case studies are very encouraging.