AWNIS: Energy-Efficient Adaptive Wireless Network Interface Selection for Industrial Mobile Devices

Mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones are widely used not only in our everyday lives but also in various industrial fields. Most of these mobile devices have multiple wireless network interfaces, such as Bluetooth, 3G, and Wi-Fi. A considerable amount of energy is consumed to transfer the data through wireless communication. Moreover, most of these mobile devices operate on limited battery power. In industrial environments, changes in the communication environment are severe due to significant noise sources and due to distortion in the transceiver circuitry of strong motors, static frequency changers, electrical discharge devices, and other devices. It is necessary to select the network interface efficiently in order to extend the lifetimes of mobile devices and their applications. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an energy-efficient adaptive wireless network interface-selection scheme (AWNIS). Our scheme is proposed based on the mathematical modeling of energy consumption and data transfer delay patterns. Our scheme selects the best wireless network interface in terms of energy consumption by considering the link quality and adapting a dynamic network interface-selection interval according to the network environment. The simulation results show that proposed scheme effectively improves the energy efficiency while guaranteeing a certain level of data transfer delay.