Modeling Energy Efficiency in Wireless Internet Communication

For wireless mobile Internet users the length of the battery life is one of the most important performance factors. The energy efficiency of the data transmission over radio is a key component affecting the battery lifetime. This paper investigates WLAN energy consumption in network communication on a Mobile handset. The paper introduces an energy model that allows analysis and simulation of the energy efficiency of the Internet protocols on a Wireless Network Interface, and has extended the NS-2 simulation platform to allow investigating the energy consumption of the Radio Modem and the Power Amplifier in WLAN 802.11g network interface of a mobile device. The paper has also validated the model against measurements on real wireless hardware, and show that the simulation results closely match the real world behavior.