Parallel Data Transfer with Voice Calls for Energy-Efficient Mobile Services

Battery consumption is one challenge for mobile applications and services. In this paper we explore the scenario where mobile phones delay the transfer of non-urgent data and perform the communication while a voice call is active. Our measurements show that data transfer during voice call requires only slightly over 10% additional power and that simultaneous voice call slows down the file transfer by 3%-14%. As a result we can save over 80% of energy in data transfer if we can delay the communication to a time when user is speaking at the mobile phone. For a user speaking 26 minutes a day this would allow 50MB of low energy data communication. A large class of applications can delay their data transfer without major effect to the user experience. The power saving mechanism can be implemented either in an application specific fashion or, preferably, at the middleware layer.