E-MiLi: Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening in Wireless Networks

WiFi interface is known to be a primary energy consumer in mobile devices, and Idle Listening (IL) is the dominant source of energy consumption in WiFi. Most existing protocols, such as the 802.11 Power-Saving Mode (PSM), attempt to reduce the time spent in IL by sleep scheduling. However, through an extensive analysis of real-world traffic, the authors found more than 60% of energy is consumed in IL, even with PSM enabled. To remedy this problem, the authors propose E-MiLi (Energy-Minimizing idle Listening) that reduces the power consumption in IL, given that the time spent in IL has already been optimized by sleep scheduling.