Power Consumption Analysis of the Always-Best-Connected User Equipment

Abstract

Mobile Internet has rapidly evolved in the past years with an ever increasing number of novel technologies and services with a variety of access technologies. Indeed, today's mobile devices often support multiple communication technologies for accessing Internet services. For users the accessing of these data hungry services means that the mobile device has to be charged more often. Energy efficiency in mobile device communication has been considered to be out of users hands. The concept of Always Best Connected (ABC) allows a person to connect applications using the devices and access technologies that best suit to his or her needs, thereby combining the features of access technologies to provide an enhanced user experience for future Internet. This Always Best Connected scenario can make mobile device more energy efficient by using always the most energy efficient connection. Mobile communication networks and connected devices consume a small fraction of the global energy supply. However, meeting the rapidly increasing demand for more capacity in wireless broadband access will further increase the energy consumption. For example Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast 2010-2015 expects compound annual growth rate of 92 percent during 2010 to 2015 Operators are now facing both investing in denser and denser networks as well as increased energy cost. Current cellular systems based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) is characterized by high spectrum efficiency, but low energy efficiency. In urban areas as well as in homes and offices alongside cellular networks IEEE 802.11 (WLAN in this papers context) networks are available. In this heterogeneous network environment the communication energy efficiency can make significant difference when considering how often the user has to recharge the mobile device. In this article we analyze energy efficiency of Always-Best-Connected solution. The application is used in measurements in a various real-life use-cases. The results are showing that algorithm can improve overall energy efficiency without compromising the user experience.