On Reducing Power Consumption of Transmitting Stations in 802.11 MIMO Networks

We propose an online algorithm for energy minimization of transmitting stations in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). Our algorithm configures radio frequency (RF) parameters such as the number of transmitting antennas based on the real-time traffic demand and channel measurements so that the power consumption of the device is reduced and the minimum data rate requirements of stations at a target error rate are satisfied. The transition between different RF configurations is theoretically investigated by employing a 2D Markov model. Using an 802.11ac hardware testbed, we experimentally demonstrate that the power consumption of a transmitting station can be reduced up to 33%. We also validate that the experimental and the theoretical results closely matc