Deploying Energy Efficient Wi-Fi Networks

Abstract

The growing number of Wi-Fi networks at homes, buildings and public areas can consume excessive energy and therefore increase CO2 emissions. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate the energy consumption of Wi-Fi networks in general. This study is based on real-world observations both usage and energy consumption of Wi-Fi access points. A variety of off-the-shelf Wi-Fi access points were examined to investigate to what degree clients' usage patterns, especially the signal to noise ratio (SNR) affects the energy consumption. The results indicate that low SNR increases the energy consumption up to 136% in various Wi-Fi access points. Therefore, confining clients with a low level of SNR can reduce the energy consumption of Wi-Fi access points while increases network throughput. Hence, findings of this paper can improve the energy efficiency of Wi-Fi networks in particular energy and cost efficiency of public hotspots. Index Terms-Energy efficiency; Wi-Fi networks; energy monitoring; power consumption; green computing.

Based on Temporal and Spatial Traffic Characteristics for Energy-Efficient Wi-Fi Network

“…Researching on users in an AP-scaled SA, we will calculate the downlink and uplink SNR, respectively. In the work [29], various off-the-shelf Wi-Fi access points were tested to investigate customer usage patterns, and the results showed that low signal-to-noise ratios increased energy consumption of different Wi-Fi access points by 136%. e calculation of downlink and uplink SNR in the cooperative mode is as follows: (1) downlink: since the channel state information is available at the AP end, the optimal cooperative transmission mechanism is cooperative beamforming.…”