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. 2019 Nov 1;19(21):4745.
doi: 10.3390/s19214745.

Hardware Mechanism for Energy Saving in WiFi Access Points

Juan Pablo García Baquerizo  1   2 , Alvaro Suárez  3 , Elsa Macias  4 , Edgar Salas  5
Affiliations

Hardware Mechanism for Energy Saving in WiFi Access Points

Juan Pablo García Baquerizo et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Wireless fidelity (WiFi) networks are deployed in several varied environments all around the World. Usually, the wireless fidelity access points are always on in houses and other small companies. In buildings of large companies and public organizations and in university campuses the number of access points is elevated; they are powered using power over the ethernet and are always on. Consequently, they consume a considerable amount of electric energy. The last versions of the International Electric and Electronic Engineers 802.11 standardized procedures to save energy in a wireless fidelity terminal but not in the access point. We designed a formal method to show when energy can be saved in wireless fidelity access points considering different power supplies for the access point: an electric energy battery and a standard voltage supply. We use an external battery that stores electric energy during an interval of time from a standard voltage supply (Charge period). After that interval (Discharge period), the energy supply for the access point is the external battery. Those intervals of time are repeated sequentially (Charge and Discharge cycles). We verified our formal model implementing a hardware circuit that controls the power supply for the access point. The amount of energy saving for a large number of of access points during a long period of time is considerably high.

Keywords: access point; battery; energy saving; power consumption optimization; power router; wireless fidelity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Graphic schema of the wireless fidelity access point (WiFi AP) and main components of our novel mechanism for energy saving. (b) Processing model: chained alternating charge and discharge periods.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Graphic and formal model of our system without our mechanism.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Graphic and formal model of our system with our mechanism working in the charge period.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Graphic and formal model of our system with our mechanism working in the discharge period.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Components of the system that implemented our hardware mechanism.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Measuring current and voltage supply to the AP alone and only transmitting beacons.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Charging current and voltage of isolated battery.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Charging current and voltage of the B with our mechanism: (a) the power-over-ethernet (PoE) output, (b) the Badt output.
Figure 9
Figure 9
(a) Evolution of Vc and Ic in time. (b) Evolution of power consumption in time (Tc).
Figure 10
Figure 10
Discharging current (Id) and voltage (Vd) of the battery with our mechanism: (a) OBTx-1 and (b) OBTx-2.
Figure 11
Figure 11
(a) Evolution of Vd and Id in time. (b) Evolution of power consumption in time (Td).
Figure 12
Figure 12
Comparison of power consumption in one cycle (k = 1) with and without our mechanism.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Scaling energy saving of a day (k = 2) in a month (k = 62).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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