An Accurate Power Analysis Model Based on MAC Layer for the DCF of 802.11n

802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology is now common in power sensitive devices like smart phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). In this article, we present an accurate power consumption model based on the Bianchi model [13] and the power measurement in PHY layer [9] to predict the power consumption of 802.11n and Multiple-Inputs-Multiple-Outputs (MIMO) mode of 802.11n. In this model, we calculate the total power consumption by summing six consumed powers: the idle listening power consumed in the DIFS period, the back-off stage, the power consumed in transmitting a frame, the idle listening power consumed in the SIFS turn-around time, the power consumed in receiving an ACK frame from AP and the power consumed in the collision for one frame transmission. Our analyses and simulations show that the power consumed in idle listing will dominate the total power consumption when the number of the active stations is large. The successful possibility and MAC efficiency of 802.11n are also analyzed and simulated in this article. The imperfect channel scenario will be evaluated, too. This power analysis model to our knowledge has not been presented in the previous works so far.