On the effects of transmit power control on the energy consumption of WiFi network cards

Transmit power control has been largely proposed as a solution to improve the performance of packet radio systems in terms of increased throughput, spatial reuse and battery lifetime for mobile terminals. However, the benefits of transmit power control schemes on these different performance figures may strongly depend on the employed PHY technology and channel access mechanism. In this paper, we focus on the effects of power control on the energy consumption of WiFi network cards. By means of several experimental tests carried out under different operation conditions and modulation schemes, we try to justify why the reduction of the transmission power has a marginal effect on the overall energy consumption.