Energy Efficient Architecture for Green Handsets in Next Generation IP-Based Wireless Networks

Next generation wireless networks are expected to integrate harmoniously in an IP-based core network. Such paradigm shift will amalgamate several distinct radio access technologies into a unifying composite network. However, this creates a fundamental problem for handsets which manifests in high power consumption due to network discovery that is typically carried out by performing scanning operations. Since handsets are naturally constrained by its battery lifetime, this paper analyzes the impact of network discovery on the handsets´ power consumption from the network architecture perspective. Particular, we focus on network discovery through the scanning (information pulling) and broadcasting (information pushing) approaches. In this context, we extend a unified analytical model to evaluate the performance comparison of energy efficiency between the legacy and terminal oriented network-assisted (TONA) architectures. Comprehensive numerical and simulation results show that the TONA handover architecture provides an energy saving of 8 35% to promote green handsets under various network load and scanning intervals.