Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan (AWKUM) faculty member Aamir
Akbar, who is currently perusing PhD in Computer Science from Aston University,
has developed a method to improve battery life of mobile devices, such as
smartphones and tablets, by minimizing the power consumption of mobile apps by
as much as 60 percent.
The research, published in Transactions on Emerging
Telecommunications Technologies Journal, presents a solution that integrates
mobile computing with cloud computing, with tools developed to identify the
most power-hungry parts of a mobile app and then moves them to the cloud using
a technique called code-o?oading.
Using the code-offloading technique, the power-hungry parts of the
mobile-cloud hybrid application are first identified, and then o?oaded to the
cloud and executed there, instead of on the device itself. As they execute on
the cloud instead of the mobile device, the device’s own components are not
used, power is saved which prolongs the battery life.
The doctoral researcher Aamir Akbar, who developed the framework,
said: “Results of our experiments have shown that battery consumption could be
reduced by over 60 per cent, at an additional cost of just over 1 MB of network
usage.”
Dr Peter Lewis, from Aston University, said: “By instrumenting
mobile apps and using optimization algorithms to search for e?cient app configurations,
the tools identify the most power-hungry parts of a mobile app and move them to
the cloud. And since our framework is general-purpose, it can be applied to any
mobile app.” The researchers are now working to apply this technique to
battery-powered mobile robots that could be used in a variety of situations,
for example in search and rescue operations, where battery lifetime is
critical.
