WIFI NAPPING DOUBLES PHONE BATTERY LIFE
A Duke University graduate student has found a way to double the battery life of mobile devices such as smartphones or laptop computers by making changes to WiFi technology. WiFi is a popular wireless technology that helps users download information from the Internet. Such downloads, including pictures, music and video streaming, can be a major drain of battery. The energy drain is especially severe in the presence of other WiFi devices in the neighborhood. In such cases, each device has to “stay awake” before it gets its turn to download a small piece of the desired information. This means that the battery drainage in downloading a movie in Manhattan is far higher than downloading the same movie in a farmhouse in the Midwest, the researchers said.
The new system has been termed SleepWell by Justin Manweiler, a graduate student in computer science under the direction of Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Dukes Pratt School of Engineering. The SleepWell system was presented at the ninth Association for Computing Machinerys International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in Washington, D.C.
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