Impact of video quality and wireless network interface on power consumption of mobile devices

TL;DR

This study investigates how video quality and wireless network type influence the power consumption of mobile devices, revealing significant increases in energy use with higher video quality and different network interfaces.

Contribution

It provides empirical measurements of power consumption variations based on video quality and network type, offering insights for energy-efficient multimedia system design.

Findings

WiFi streaming increases power consumption by up to 38%.

Mobile network (3G) increases power consumption by up to 64%.

Higher video quality raises CPU and WiFi power use significantly.

Abstract

During the last years, many improvements were made to the hardware capability of mobile devices. As mobile software also became more interactive and data processing intensive, the increased power demand could not be compensated by the improvements on battery technology. Adaptive systems can help to balance the demand of applications with the limitations of battery resources. For effective systems, the influence of multimedia quality on power consumption of the components of mobile devices needs to be better understood. In this paper, we analyze the impact of video quality and wireless network type on the energy consumption of a mobile device. We have found that the additional power consumption is up to 38% higher when a movie is played over a WiFi network instead from internal memory and 64% higher in case of a mobile network (3G). We have also discovered that a higher movie quality not only affects the power consumption of the CPU but also the power consumption of the WiFi unit by up to 58% and up to 72% respectively on mobile networks.