Power Consumption and Throughput of Wireless Communication Technologies for Smartphones

As the popularity of smartphones increases, so does the need for their power efficiency. Many hardware components such as sensors are added to smartphones which contribute to higher power consumption. Although battery efficiency tries to balance this issue, sometimes it is not enough. In this paper, we evaluate the power consumption, throughput, and data transmission efficiency of three wireless technologies on smartphones. Specifically, through extensive experimentation, we examine the performance of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LTE of four smartphones. The results can help designers estimate the power usage of wireless technologies commonly found in smartphones of today.