Abstract
A tremendous amount of energy is wasted today, because computing devices are left running all the time even though they are needed only sporadically. Especially in office environments many devices (e.g., printers) are very rarely turned off, because they need to be available from time to time and because it is inconvenient having to switch them on and off manually. Existing solutions, such as Wake-on-LAN (WoL), provide support for managing the power consumption of the network devices remotely using an always-on data channel. However, these solutions are inefficient, because power to the network interface has to be maintained even when the host system is asleep just to ensure remote accessibility. We propose a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based out-of-band signaling architecture for network interfaces which minimizes the systems’ power consumption during the large idle periods when nobody is using them. This is done by separating the data and control channels on the Internet-enabled devices using a low-power out-of-band signaling channel based on battery driven, energy scavenging devices. Unlike existing solutions, which only allow parts of the system to go in sleep modes, our architecture allows the whole system, including the main power supply, to be shut down. Our initial investigation indicates a significant reduction in energy consumption of devices during idle times compared to the existing in-band signaling mechanisms such as WoL.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Muhammad Hamad Alizai
LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan
Dr. Jó Agila Bitsch
