Integrating Mobile Objects into the Wirelessly Wired World: The Need for Energy Efficient Algorithms

Abstract

There is a need to design a new type of communication systems which can respond to the restricted and changing energy resources encountered due to mobility. Energy efficient or “Power Aware” Communication needs to create protocol building blocks that meet given Quality of Service and performance criteria, while working within a limited energy budget. Devices and systems such as smart tags, smart pagers, intelligent ID cards, warehouse identification tags, store labels, personal battlefield communicators, have dealt with the issue of power for several years now. More recently consumer electronics has entered this realm too. New Internet ready “smart phones”, expected to appear in the market by mid 2001, will adapt to changes in frequencies, transmission standards and protocols around the world at a push of a button. These “software defined radios” will provide a universal way for connecting to multimedia services and Internet. In all these, the battery power to support them is seen as a primary limitation.

In this talk we present some of the new paradigms leading to the design of communications protocols with energy constraint. Their general principle is the minimization of time in which the device needs to be active (awake), the maximization of the limited bandwidth utilization, and meeting access delays of the applications’ constraints. We will use tag type devices as a vehicle to present solutions available at the access/network layer. Through these we will demonstrate approaches unique to the energy aware communication as it moves from tags, to phones, to desktop to portable and mobile platforms by efficiently dealing with power-aware needs and strategies.