Energy Efficient Wi-Fi Management for Smart Devices

Abstract-Data communication is a significant component of smart device energy consumption today, and is likely to increase with the rising connectivity demands of today's mobile applications. Wi-Fi is a major supporting technology and as such, efficient energy management solutions are much needed. In this paper, we detail the Wi-Fi energy consumption characteristics and propose two energy saving schemes: packing and alignment, implementable at the application layer. Our investigations also reveal that these schemes are highly reliant on the network metric -available bandwidth, which is not readily obtainable on smartphones and existing wired solutions are ill-suited due to the dynamics of the wireless environment, as well as the energy constraint of mobile devices. Therefore, we propose a new energy efficient bandwidth measurement tool called BreezChirp. As validation, we implemented both BreezChirp and the WiFi management schemes on modern Andriod smartphones and evaluated their performance through field experiments

Energy Efficient Wi-Fi Management for Smart Devices

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Interactive visualisation of electricity usage in smart environments

Saving electricity is a trending topic due to the electricity challenges that are being faced globally. Smart environments are environments that are equipped with physical objects, which include computers, sensors, actuators, smartphones, and wearable devices interconnected together through the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things provides a network to achieve communication, and computation abilities to provide individuals with smart services anytime, and anywhere. Rapid developments in information technology have increased the number of smart appliances being used, leading to increased electricity usage. Devices and appliances in Smart Environments continue to consume electricity even when not in use, because of the standby function. The problems arise as the electricity consumption of the standby function accumulates to large amounts. Effective communication through visualisation of the electricity consumption in a Smart Environment provides a viable solution to reducing the consumption of electricity. This research aimed to design and developed a visualisation system that successfully communicates electricity consumption to the user using a variety of visualisation techniques. The Design Science Research Methodology was used to address the research questions and was used to iteratively design and develop an energy usage visualisation system. The visualisation system was created for the Smart Lab at the Nelson Mandela University's Department of Computing Sciences. A usability study was conducted to assess the usability and efficacy of the system. The system was found to be usable and effective in communicating power usage to potential customers, since the participants were able to complete the tasks in a short amount of time. The positive results show that visualisation can aid in communicating electricity usage to customers, resulting in a possible reduction in electricity consumption and improved decision-making.Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, School of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, 202

Interactive visualisation of electricity usage in smart environments

Saving electricity is a trending topic due to the electricity challenges that are being faced globally. Smart environments are environments that are equipped with physical objects, which include computers, sensors, actuators, smartphones, and wearable devices interconnected together through the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things provides a network to achieve communication, and computation abilities to provide individuals with smart services anytime, and anywhere. Rapid developments in information technology have increased the number of smart appliances being used, leading to increased electricity usage. Devices and appliances in Smart Environments continue to consume electricity even when not in use, because of the standby function. The problems arise as the electricity consumption of the standby function accumulates to large amounts. Effective communication through visualisation of the electricity consumption in a Smart Environment provides a viable solution to reducing the consumption of electricity. This research aimed to design and developed a visualisation system that successfully communicates electricity consumption to the user using a variety of visualisation techniques. The Design Science Research Methodology was used to address the research questions and was used to iteratively design and develop an energy usage visualisation system. The visualisation system was created for the Smart Lab at the Nelson Mandela University's Department of Computing Sciences. A usability study was conducted to assess the usability and efficacy of the system. The system was found to be usable and effective in communicating power usage to potential customers, since the participants were able to complete the tasks in a short amount of time. The positive results show that visualisation can aid in communicating electricity usage to customers, resulting in a possible reduction in electricity consumption and improved decision-making.Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, School of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, 202