Energy Consumption of Data Transfer Over Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Systems

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology is a breakthrough that considerably improves the throughput of wireless networks. The ever-growing technology has improved the smartphones to meet the requirements of current IEEE standards for wireless local area networks (WLANs). However, the benefits of smartphones are always constrained by their battery life. This study investigates the energy consumed by a smartphone during the transmission and reception of data. The effect of the different features of 802.11n (including Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) and MIMO) is investigated in terms of throughput and energy consumption using a network simulator (NS3). Additionally, the energy consumption during the process of transmission and reception is compared by using per-bit energy consumption for data transfer with different MIMO configurations and physical data rates. The results show that increasing the system configuration beyond 2×2 MIMO improves the throughput and reduce the energy consumption. In addition, a simple energy consumption model is developed for transmission and reception based on MIMO parameter.