Walking with the Oracle: Efficient Use of Mobile Networks through Location-Awareness

TL;DR

This paper introduces an energy-efficient approach for mobile network switching using an oracle for network availability, reducing power consumption while maintaining connection quality.

Contribution

It proposes a Markov model and a prototype for an oracle that dynamically manages NIC activation based on network availability, enhancing energy efficiency in ABPS.

Findings

Significant energy savings achieved with minimal connection impact

Markov model effectively estimates oracle's impact

Prototype demonstrates practical feasibility

Abstract

Always Best Packet Switching (ABPS) is a novel approach for wireless communications that enables mobile nodes, equipped with multiple network interface cards (NICs), to dynamically determine the most appropriate NIC to use. Using ABPS, a mobile node can seamlessly switch to a different NIC in order to get better performance, without causing communication interruptions at the application level. To make this possible, NICs are kept always active and a software monitor constantly probes the channels for available access points. While this ensures maximum connection availability, considerable energy may be wasted when no access points are available for a given NIC. In this paper we address this issue by investigating the use of an "oracle" able to provide information on network availability. This allows to dynamically switch on/off NICs based on reported availability, thus reducing the power consumption. We present a Markov model which allows us to estimate the impact of the oracle on the ABPS mechanism: results show that significant reduction in energy consumption can be achieved with minimal impact on connection availability. We conclude by describing a prototype implementation of the oracle based on Web services and geolocalization.