Geo-localized messages irradiation using smartphones: An energy consumption analysis

The widespread availability of smartphones with wireless communication and geo-positioning capabilities has open new opportunities to services for casual passersby, e.g. the delivery of advertising when they visit a certain area. Typically such messages are delivered to cellular phones, consuming thus part of the energy of these devices. Since these devices are constrained in battery-energy, disseminating messages using little energy represents a challenge for designers of this type of solutions. This paper presents a study based on simulations that intends to identify good strategies to irradiate messages collaboratively, minimizing the energy consumption in the devices involved in the information exchange. The simulation results show that the best irradiation strategy will depend on the number of devices in the area to be irradiated. Moreover, such a strategy will have more influence if the devices are dispersed. These findings should help designers of mobile collaborative applications based on messages irradiation, to identify the best dissemination strategy depending on the current network context.