Accounting of energy consumption from Wi-Fi interface in portable devices

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Issue Date
2010-12
Authors
Jadhav, Shraddha
Advisor
Namboodiri, Vinod
Citation
Abstract

Various reports about greenhouse emissions over the past decade have raised the global consciousness regarding worldwide energy consumption in various arenas. The time has come to adopt energy-efficient methods in all areas, including computing devices. The need for energy efficiency in portable computing and communication devices is great, first due to the fact that because their usage has been increasing exponentially and, second, because little has been done in this field, with performance still being tracked as the focal point of development. One of the major features of any portable device is the wireless communication interface (typically a Wi-Fi card), with many applications being based on the Internet. A major concern with portable devices is maintaining a battery charge for long periods of time. All major applications like the voice over Internet protocol (VOIP), file transfer protocol (FTP), and video conferencing deplete a large amount of energy from portable devices. Thus, accounting for the energy consumption of the Wi-Fi card is very important, both to improve the battery lifetimes of these devices in the future and to reduce the amount of energy consumed from the power grid to charge these batteries. In this thesis, the energy consumption of the Wi-Fi interface in portable devices, such as laptops and smartphones, was calculated for various applications. Energy consumption was measured experimentally and then scaled to account for the large number of devices in use. The carbon footprint was calculated and the offset required was determined. Considering the explosive growth in the number of portable devices in use, projections on energy consumption over the next few years were made.

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Thesis (M.S.)--Wichita State University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
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