A Power-Saving Network Architecture for Accessing the Internet from Mobile Computers: Design, Implementation and Measurements

In this paper we propose a power-saving strategy for accessing the Internet from a mobile computer. Firstly, we measure the power consumption of a mobile computer that uses a TCP connection to send/receive data from the Internet. These measurements indicate that, by adopting TCP, the power consumption is negatively affected by the congestion in the fixed network. To solve this problem we extend the Indirect TCP model to achieve both the TCP reliability and an optimal power consumption level. To test our claim we design and implement a Power-Saving Network Architecture based on an enhanced indirect TCP model. Experimental results show that our approach is a promising development, with respect to the classical TCP approach, to reduce power consumption. Specifically, in our experiments the power consumption, by exploiting the enhanced indirect model, is significantly lower than the power consumption measured when using the legacy TCP approach.