A predictive dynamic power management for LTE-Advanced mobile devices

Abstract

Power consumption is a key challenge for LTE-Advanced or future 5G mobile devices and current power management systems successfully achieve significant power savings. However, these systems are driven by static rules and provide a posteriori responses to traffic and context changes. In this paper, we propose a smart dynamic power management system for cellular modems, extending existing power saving mechanisms by using machine learning-based traffic prediction. With the a priori knowledge of specific scheduling messages, internal device parameters can be finely tuned to improve the modem power consumption. In order to accurately estimate the power saving potential of several LTE use cases, we build a relevant data set of live network modem traces, as well as a power model of the baseband physical layer and radio frequency components. Subsequently, we propose an evaluation methodology and apply it to analyze the predictive power management performance in terms of error rate and global power consumption outcome. Our analysis results in maximal power savings of 12% for meaningful traffic scenarios as well as the identification of variables of interest to improve the proposed power manager.