SwitchR: Reducing system power consumption in a multi-client, multi-radio environment

Multiple wireless network interfaces in a single mobile device exist in order to support their diverse communications and networking needs. This paper proposes a general switching architecture, SwitchR, for managing radio communications for multiple (client) devices utilizing multiple heterogeneous radios per device. SwitchR is deployable incrementally within existing wireless infrastructures, and considers the load imposed on the wireless channel by other communicating clients. SwitchR demonstrates reduction in energy consumption of a mobile device by 47% - 72%, depending upon the application, over the Power Save Mode in WiFi and 13% - 60% reduction in energy over previous multi-radio architectures that do not consider the interactions between multiple clients.