C2POWER

To avoid the foreseen 4G “energy trap” and to help wireless devices become more environmentally friendly, there is a clear need for disruptive strategies to address all aspects of power efficiency from the user devices through to the core infrastructure of the network, and how these devices and equipment interact with each other. As roughly 50% of the power budget of handsets is directly related to the wireless communication capabilities, any reduction in the power consumption in these functionalities will have a substantial impact on the battery life time. In this context, C2POWER project researched, developed and demonstrated how cognition and cooperative strategies can be extended to decrease the overall energy consumption and radiated power of mobile devices while still enabling the required performance in terms of QoS.

In particular, C2POWER investigated two complementary techniques to increase power efficiency at the wireless interface of handsets:

Cooperative power saving strategies between neighbouring nodes using low power short range communications;
Cognitive handover mechanisms to select the Radio Access Technology which has the lowest energy demand while providing the required QoS.
As a consequence the project is currently supporting emerging standardization groups to move from the classical non cooperative paradigm (where the mobile device is a “terminal” entity) towards a cooperative approach, where cognitive devices are able to establish cooperation to save battery lifetime in heterogeneous environments. C2POWER also provided sufficient evidence on the technology and economics viability and its deployment.