The Internet explosion has created bigger and bigger data centers with ever increasing power consumption needs. Concurrently, the mobility mania is driving access Internet networks to unprecedented growth around the world. In April, University of Melbourne’s Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications published a white paper in which it predicted that by 2015, “wireless cloud” will consume 460 percent more energy than was consumed in 2012. As per this study, up to 90 percent of this consumption will be attributable to wireless access network technologies, and just 9 percent to data centers.
Consequently, efforts are underway to improve the 802.11 based wireless LAN or Wi-Fi protocols so that they can deliver higher data throughput while substantially lowering power consumption. more A recent study by the researchers from the University of Thessaly and Centre for Research and Technology Hellas in Greece shows that the energy consumption of IEEE 802.11n wireless protocol is up to 75 percent lower than that the older protocols. This improvement is credited to innovative “frame aggregation” mechanism deployed in data transmission and reception.
As per this study, frame aggregation is a feature used by the 802.11e and 802.11n wireless LAN standards. It increases throughput by sending two or more data frames in a single transmission. Besides improving network performance, frame aggregation also dramatically cuts energy usage. The impact is going to be significant as tens of billions of devices will connect to the Internet during the next decade, according to the Greek researchers.
Prior to the release of 802.11n, with each introduction of 802.11, there was improvement in data throughput and reliability protocols but there was no reduction in power because they all use the same Media Access Control (MAC) architecture. However, the case is different with 802.11n, which features two types of frame aggregation--MAC Service Data Unit (MSDU) aggregation and MAC Protocol Data Unit (MPDU) aggregation.
An experimental study conducted by the Greek researchers compared the older 802.11a/g networks to 802.11n. The results indicate that with A-MPDU aggregation active, the energy consumption per transmitted bit is 75 percent lower than without aggregation.
As Wi-Fi continues to evolve, a study by market strategy firm iGR analyzes this trend and offers new insight into future wireless usage, reports TMC (News - Alert) contributing writer Kasey Schefflin-Emrich. It shows how user-driven usage, currently the dominant form of Wi-Fi offload, will be exceeded by carrier-driven usage in the near future. The iGR study predicts that the carrier-driven Wi-Fi offload will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 215 percent by 2017, while user-driven Wi-Fi offload will surge by 49 percent.
Edited by Rich Steeves