A Duke University student has created a wireless power saving technology called Sleep Well which has the capability to double the battery life of mobile devices, they claim.
The technology addresses the need for WiFi devices to ‘stay awake’ while waiting their turn to download a packet and this results in higher battery consumption in areas of dense WiFi availability.
Using an analogy Duke graduate student Malweiler explained the concept of the technology: "Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush."
"With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same."
"The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time," Manweiler said. "The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance."
The researchers called SleepWell a potentially ‘important upgrade’ to WiFi technology although it does seem unlikely that WiFi power savings will result in doubling of most smartphone phone users’ battery life.
Still, power is power.