Avoiding the Rush Hours: WiFi Energy Management Via Traffic Isolation

WiFi continues to be a prime source of energy consumption in mobile devices. This paper observes that, despite a rich body of research in WiFi energy management, there is room for improvement. The key finding is that WiFi energy optimizations have conventionally been designed with a single AP in mind. However, network contention among different APs can dramatically increase a client's energy consumption. Each client may have to keep awake for long durations before its own AP gets a chance to send packets to it. As the AP density increases in the vicinity, the waiting time inflates, resulting in a proportional decrease in battery life.