Experiments on the Energy Saving and Performance Effects of IEEE 802.11 Power Saving Mode (PSM).

This paper presents experimental results for the actual effects of the IEEE 802.11 power saving mode (PSM) on communication performance and energy saving. First, we have measured the throughput and response time of a station working in PSM with various applications and compared them to those of the active mode. Energy consumptions have also been compared by analyzing trace data. Second, the effects of a PSM station to the neighbor stations have been investigated by measuring their performance changes. The experiments show that the amount of effects varies depending on application types due to traffic burstness and congestion control of underlying transport protocols. It may happen that a PSM station running a streaming application, somewhat abnormally, does harm to the performance of the neighbor station. Finally, a primitive solution against this abnormality is presented and experimented. This study could provide a good basis for further studies on utilizing PSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]