Method developed to extend phone battery life by 60pc

MARDAN: 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 minimising 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 ?rst identi?ed, 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 optimisation algorithms to search for e?cient app con?gurations, 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.