Power consumption

Distributed Energy Consumption Monitor for Wireless Networks

TUNEGreen is a distributed energy consumption monitoring system capable of gathering and processing power consumption data of a variety of wireless networking devices (e.g. access points, wireless routers, etc.), as well as of correlating such information with data on the status (in terms of CPU, memory load, and network traffic generated/received/relayed). The TUNEGreen real-time energy consumption monitoring capabilities can be used to understand how and where power is consumed in a simple star-shaped network based on IEEE 802.11.

Network Architecture

The energy monitoring task is implemented in the form of a system daemon written using the Python language. It periodically polls the status of one or more network interfaces/devices. Such information, exported through a RESTful interface, is made available to the system manager trough a web-based interface. The information gathered by the daemon are not limited to the energy consumption statistics, but also include: CPU and memory utilization, transmission and reception statistics for every network interface supported by the network device, and a few more general information such as the system's uptime and the version of the OS. The actual energy measurement is performed with the help of a dedicated power meter connected to the network device and exporting the energy consumption statistics thorough a suitable interface (a serial interface in the current implementation of the prototype).

Energy Measurement

In the current implementation the actual energy consumption monitoring is performed using the Watts up? devices (https://www.wattsupmeters.com/). The Watts up? devices are "plug load" meters that measure the amount of electricity used by whatever device is plugged into them. The measurements are taken every second with a granularity of 0.1 Watts. The meter is equipped with a mini USB port and an Ethernet connector. The former can be used to access the data stored in the meter from a personal computer, while the later is provided to seamlessly integrate with the Google PowerMeter infrastructure.

Reference

K. Gomez, T. Rasheed, R. Riggio, D. Miorandi, I. Chlamtac and F. Granelli
Analysing the Energy Consumption Behaviour of WiFi Networks
in Proc. of IEEE GreenCom'11, Online Conference.

K. Gomez, R. Riggio, D. Miorandi, I. Chlamtac and F. Granelli
TUNEGreen: A Distributed Energy Consumption Monitor for Wireless Networks
in Proc. of IEEE WoWMoM 2011.