Towards an Efficient Context-Aware System: Problems and Suggestions to Reduce Energy Consumption in Mobile Devices

Looking for optimizing the battery consumption is an open issue, and we think it is feasible if we analyze the battery consumption behavior of a typical context-aware application to reduce context-aware operations at runtime. This analysis is based on different context sensors configurations. Actually existing context-aware approaches are mainly based on collecting and sending context data to external components, without taking into account how expensive are these operations in terms of energy consumption. As a first result of our work in progress, we are proposing a way for reducing the context data publishing. We have designed a testing battery consumption architecture supported by Nokia Energy Profiler tool to verify consumption in different scenarios

Power Management in Mobile Computing (a Survey)

Rapid advances in technology have resulted in laptop (mobile) computers with performance and features comparable to desktop (stationary) machines. Advances in rechargeable battery technology have failed to keep pace, decreasing the usefulness of mobile computers and portable wireless devices. Several methods of power management can be used to prolong the battery life of a mobile computer. We provide a detailed analysis of power consumption typically encountered in a networked laptop computer and the power management methods currently used. We also outline some novel proposed power management methods

Towards an Efficient Context-Aware System: Problems and Suggestions to Reduce Energy Consumption in Mobile Devices

Looking for optimizing the battery consumption is an open issue, and we think it is feasible if we analyze the battery consumption behavior of a typical context-aware application to reduce context-aware operations at runtime. This analysis is based on different context sensors configurations. Actually existing context-aware approaches are mainly based on collecting and sending context data to external components, without taking into account how expensive are these operations in terms of energy consumption. As a first result of our work in progress, we are proposing a way for reducing the context data publishing. We have designed a testing battery consumption architecture supported by Nokia Energy Profiler tool to verify consumption in different scenarios

Power management as a system-level inhibitor of modularity in the mobile computer industry

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-90).Since the mid-90s, the computer industry has been very modular with respect to both product architecture and industry structure. The growing market size of mobile computers means that the challenges facing this segment are starting to affect the direction of the industry. It is argued in this paper that power management in mobile computers is forcing the industry in the direction of more integral product solutions and, hence, a more integral industry structure. That is to say, the industry is assuming a structure similar to the early days of mainframe computers when one firm delivered the entire proprietary integral system. Furthermore, this trend towards more integrality in mobile computer systems is due to fundamental physical attributes of the system; specifically, that information transfer systems lend themselves more readily to modular architectures than systems that transfer significant power. Thus, as processors and mobile computers become more powerful, they start to behave more like power transfer systems and side effects of this power, such as heat, require a more integral approach to managing it. A "free body" diagram framework is presented which provides a way of thinking about how integrality forces are acting on an industry's trajectory. Evidence is presented showing how the dominant player in the computer supply chain, Intel, is exhibiting this vertical/integral behavior in a number of ways.by Samuel K. Weinstein.S.M

Integrated Power Management for Mobile Computers

Recently the mobile community has focused on techniques for reducing the energy consumption of mobile hosts. These power management techniques typically target communication devices such as wireless network interfaces, aiming to reduce the usage, and thus the energy consumption, of the particular device itself. We observe that optimization of a single device's energy consumption, without considering the effect of the strategy on the rest of the machine, can have negative consequences. We propose power management techniques addressing mobile host communications that encompass all components of a mobile host in an effort to optimize total energy consumption. Specifically, we perform runtime adaptation of communication parameters in order to minimize the energy consumed during communication, using information about the network environment to compensate for additional energy consumption due to the dynamic nature of the services available from wireless communication devices. Our results show that power management can be achieved without sacrificing the QoS provided to the application

The Power Broker: intelligent power management for mobile computers

Technology has improved processor speed and memory densities at exponential rates. Rapid advances in portable computing have resulted in laptop computers with performance and features comparable to their desktop counterparts. Battery technology has failed to keep pace, decreasing the usefulness of mobile computers and portable wireless devices. We provide a detailed analysis of power consumption typically encountered in a networked laptop computer and the power management methods currently used. We then show how interaction between independent power consumers results in inefficient use of energy resources and propose the Power Broker as a means for orchestrating energy use with the goal of extending battery life. The Power Broker’s resource management algorithms exploit an abundant resource (CPU power) to conserve a scarce one (battery energy).