Markov decision process (MDP) framework for optimizing software on mobile phones

We present a framework based on Markov decision process to optimize software on mobile phones. Unlike previous approaches in literature that focus on energy optimization while meeting a specific task-related time constraint, we model the desired talk-time as an explicit user given parameter and formulate the optimization of resources such as battery-life on a mobile phone as a decision processes that maximizes a user specified application specific reward or utility metric while meeting the talk-time constraint. We propose efficient techniques to solve the optimization problem based on dynamic programming and illustrate how it can be used in the context of realistic applications such as WiFi radio power optimization and email synchronization. We present a design methodology to use the proposed technique and experimental results using the Android platform from Google running on the HTC mobile phone.