A Novel APSD Scheduler for WLAN IEEE 802.11e

Wireless network interface cards are usually very expensive in terms of energy consumption, and this is a critical aspect for small mobile devices. A great deal of research is being carried out looking into ways of improving the design of protocols so as to optimize 802.11 power management. Recently, the IEEE has introduced in the 802.11e Working Group an advanced mechanism to improve 802.11 MAC power saving management, called Automatic Power Saving Deliver (APSD). In this paper, an extension of the previous APSD has been defined in order to further reduce the power consumption of an IEEE 802.11e device while guaranteeing QoS requirements in the presence of delay-sensitive applications such as multimedia streaming. The performances of the defined scheduler have been evaluated through computer simulation and compared with those obtained by using the reference APSD scheduler suggested by Task Group IEEE 802.11e (TGe).