Controlling Wi-Fi Radio 'Nap-Time' Saves Power 43
alphadogg writes "A Duke University grad student has come up with a way to double (or more) battery life in Wi-Fi devices, without any changes needed on the device itself. Essentially, the technique regulates how long and when client radios sleep (PDF), so that data transfers can be scheduled more efficiently. In a test using eight laptops and nine Nexus One Android-based smartphones on an 802.11n network, the researchers found that the scheduling technique, dubbed SleepWell, resulted in energy reductions of 38% to 51% across a variety of online applications, including YouTube, Pandora and Last.fm Internet radio, and TCP bulk data transfers. What's more, they found that as the quality of radio links degrades, the relative energy gains are even higher."
Common sense (Score:0, Insightful)
It's a wonder no one's done this already. Obviously Wi-Fi radios don't need to be on the entire time, especially in spectrum-crowded environments. Though I imagine this research was done because smartphones with Wi-Fi support have atrocious battery life when the feature is enabled.