Justin Manweiler (pictured above), a graduate student in computer science at Duke University, one day thought to himself how come WiFi devices use more power when there’s more of them in a room compared to when when they’re alone? Under the direction of Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, they created “SleepWell” to solve the dilema. Here’s how the technology works: Instead of multiple devices trying to access WiFi at the same time and causing a rush of traffic, each device takes their turn and waits, we’re talking fractions of a second here, to get the data they need. Using SleepWell, battery performance nearly doubles, and data transfer performance isn’t impacted at all. When will this type of technology end up in our smartphones and laptops? Justin doesn’t know, but we certainly hope it happens soon.
Here’s a better analogy, thought up by Justin, to explain SleepWell: “Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same. The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time. The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance.”
If you want to be hyper conservative about battery performance, then your best best is to just leave WiFi off until you really need it and crank your screen brightness all the way down. It’s also best to carry a spare charger, just in case.
[Via: Engadget]