A Novel Energy-Conscious Access Point (eAP) System With Cross-Layer Design in Wi-Fi Networks for Reliable IoT Services

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel energy-conscious access point (eAP) system with cross-layer design to increase the energy efficiency of IoT devices in IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi networks for reliable IoT services. The proposed eAP system controls the energy resources of IoT devices to extend the lifetime of the IoT device. For this purpose, we develop a new eAP system that considers a cross-layer design with a prompt TCP ACK transmit function, a caching-and-retransmit IoT data function, and a multiple IoT data aggregate function to improve the energy efficiency of the IoT device. In addition, the proposed eAP system has a device energy management module that precisely controls operating parameters, such as the transmission period of IoT packets, the delivery of traffic indication message (DTIM) value of IoT devices, and the transmitting power of IoT devices. These features extend the lifetime of the battery-powered IoT devices while satisfying service requirements for reliable IoT services. The long listening time of TCP ACK messages in receive mode (Rx) results in the high energy consumption of IoT devices due to the large round trip time. The proposed eAP system reduces the reception time of TCP ACK messages in the IoT device, using the prompt TCP ACK transmit function in the eAP. This reduces the long Rx mode time for TCP ACK reception, and increases the short sleep mode time, which results in increase of the energy efficiency of the IoT device. In the energy-saving analyses, we formulate an energy consumption model for the IoT device, and determine the energy-saving gain when the IoT device uses the eAP system model, compared to a legacy AP system model. Our performance evaluation results verify that the proposed eAP system achieves a maximum improvement in energy efficiency of approximately 88%, and 8.4 times improvement in the expected lifetime of the IoT device, compared to the legacy AP system model.