Power-Efficient Directional Wireless Communication on Small Form-Factor Mobile Devices

Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (ISLPED 2010)

Authors: Ardalan Amiri Sani, Hasan Dumanli, Lin Zhong, and Ashutosh Sabharwal

Abstract

Wireless access is known to be power-hungry for mobile devices. A key reason is that devices radiate power in all directions and much of this power will not reach the destination. To address this waste, we present BeamSwitch, a multi-antenna system designed to realize directional communication efficiently. Unlike power hungry and expensive beamforming, BeamSwitch requires only one transceiver. We provide an 802.11-compliant design and prototype of BeamSwitch. Our measurements show that with three passive directional antennas, BeamSwitch reduces the power consumption of a commercial 802.11 adapter by up to 20% and provide better quality under diverse propagation environments and extreme rotation.

Citation

@article{Amiri Sani:2010,
	Author = {A. Amiri Sani, H. Dumanli, L. Zhong, and A. Sabharwal},
	Booktitle = {Proceedings of ISLPED 2010},
	Title = {Power-Efficient Directional Wireless Communication on Small Form-Factor Mobile Devices},
	Year = {2010}}