Power Saving in Wireless LANs: Analyzing the RF Transmission Power and MAC Retransmission Trade-Off

in Proc. of European Wireless ’99 and ITG Fachtagung Mobile Kommunikation, ITG Fachbericht 157, pp. 187-192, October 1999, München, Germany Abstra t | Reduction of energy consumption of mobile communication devices is a very important research and engineering field. Many research efforts are concentrated on design of low power IC design and streamlined energy-optimized communication protocols. In this paper we explore another direction, namely Protocol Harmonization. We show by example, that balancing operation of different communication protocol layers leads to an reduction of energy consumption. This is also known as vertical protocol optimization. We demonstrate this approach by means of IEEE 802.11 a wireless LAN standard. We show that there is a RF transmission power – MAC level retransmission trade-off, which effects energy consumption and therefore requires a harmonization between physical and MAC (Medium Access Control) layer. Our results indicate, that power control mechanisms should take into account the MAC protocol as an additional parameter.