Wave & wait protocol (WWP): an energy-saving transport protocol for mobile IP-devices

This work involves the development of an experimental transport-level protocol running on top of IP for small, mobile, wireless stations. The protocol cannot and does not aim to handle real-time traffic. Its central concern is to conserve battery-powered energy used for transmission, even at the expense of slower data throughput. It attempts to conserve energy expenditure by adjusting the amount of data transmitted, trying to keep it below perceived network congestion. The higher the detected congestion risk-level in the network the less it attempts to transmit thereby minimizing the need for duplicate data retransmission due to congested routers losing packets and so on. We outline the protocol specification, mechanisms and implementation, as well as preliminary evaluation results that clearly demonstrate the energy-saving capabilities of the protocol.