Revisiting network energy efficiency of mobile apps: Performance in the wild

Sanae Rosen; Ashkan Nikravesh; Yihua Guo; Z. Morley Mao; Feng Qian; Subhabrata Sen

doi:10.1145/2815675.2815713

Revisiting network energy efficiency of mobile apps: Performance in the wild

Sanae Rosen, Ashkan Nikravesh, Yihua Guo, Z. Morley Mao, Feng Qian, Subhabrata Sen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Energy consumption due to network traffic on mobile devices continues to be a significant concern. We examine a range of excessive energy consumption problems caused by background network traffic through a two-year user study, and also validate these findings through in-lab testing of the most recent versions of major mobile apps. We discover a new energy consumption problem where foreground network traffic persists after switching from the foreground to the background, leading to unnecessary energy and data drain. Furthermore, while we find some apps have taken steps to improve the energy impact of periodic background traffic, energy consumption differences of up to an order of magnitude exist between apps with near-identical functionality. Finally, by examining how apps are used in the wild, we find that some apps continue to generate unneeded traffic for days when the app is not being used, and in some cases this wasted traffic is responsible for a majority of the app's network energy overhead. We propose that these persistent, widespread and varied sources of excessive energy consumption in popular apps should be addressed through new app management tools that tailor network activity to user interaction patterns.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	IMC 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Internet Measurement Conference
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	339-345
Number of pages	7
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450338486
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2815675.2815713
State	Published - Oct 28 2015
Externally published	Yes
Event	ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2015 - Tokyo, Japan Duration: Oct 28 2015 → Oct 30 2015

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC
Volume	2015-October

Other

Other	ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2015
Country/Territory	Japan
City	Tokyo
Period	10/28/15 → 10/30/15

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We would like to thank our anonymous reviewers as well as Erich Nahum, our shepherd, for their valuable comments. This research was supported in part by NSF under CNS-1059372 and CNS-1345226, as well as by an NSERC Canada PGS D scholarship.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 ACM.

Keywords

4G LTE
Cellular network performance
Mobile energy consumption
Smartphones

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Publisher link

10.1145/2815675.2815713

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Cite this

Rosen, S., Nikravesh, A., Guo, Y., Mao, Z. M., Qian, F., & Sen, S. (2015). Revisiting network energy efficiency of mobile apps: Performance in the wild. In IMC 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (pp. 339-345). (Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC; Vol. 2015-October). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2815675.2815713

Revisiting network energy efficiency of mobile apps: Performance in the wild. / Rosen, Sanae; Nikravesh, Ashkan; Guo, Yihua et al.
IMC 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Internet Measurement Conference. Association for Computing Machinery, 2015. p. 339-345 (Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC; Vol. 2015-October).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Rosen, S, Nikravesh, A, Guo, Y, Mao, ZM, Qian, F & Sen, S 2015, Revisiting network energy efficiency of mobile apps: Performance in the wild. in IMC 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Internet Measurement Conference. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC, vol. 2015-October, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 339-345, ACM Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2015, Tokyo, Japan, 10/28/15. https://doi.org/10.1145/2815675.2815713

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Revisiting network energy efficiency of mobile apps: Performance in the wild

Abstract

Publication series

Other

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

Publisher link

Find It

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