Energy Consumption Savings with 3G Offload

Current trends on mobile traffic show an exponential grow of the traffic consumed by users from smartphones and other portable devices. The explosion of traffic in cellular networks has forced operators to start deploying solutions to alleviate the congestion on their capacity-limited and expensive radio access networks. One of the solutions being discussed is the so called 3G offload that enables the terminals to use other technologies such as WiFi to offload some of the traffic. IP flow mobility is one mechanism providing 3G offload, by enabling selected flows to be moved among network interfaces. Although this is a very promising technology, it is not clear yet how it will affect the protocols currently in use to provide IP mobility in cellular networks, e.g., Proxy Mobile IPv6. The use of 3G offloading does not only benefits the operators, but also the final user, as it might extend the battery lifetime of its terminal. In this paper we first describe some network-based IP flow mobility extensions, highlighting important design choices. Secondly, we focus on providing experimental measurements showing how the use of this technology can result in an extended battery life for the case of 3G and WiFi enabled terminals.