Power Consumption and Performance Characterization of Streaming Multimedia Application over a WLAN

Abstract

Today’s society requires people to be connected anyplace, anytime, through different media, such as text, audio and video. This requirement explains the high adoption rate of streaming applications and wireless LANs (WLANs), and the increasing research in these topics. This article presents the power consumption characterization for a laptop computer running a streaming multimedia application over a WLAN, as well as the profile for the WLAN performance while the multimedia application is running. We found that the laptop power consumption changes depending of the network adapter in use, and the network performance is related to the type of media being transmitted over the network, to the communication channel conditions, and the protocol stack implementation.