Maximizing the user experience with energy-based fair sharing in battery limited mobile systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on consumer electronics Vol. 59; no. 3; pp. 690 - 698
• Main Authors: Wei, J., Juarez, E., Garrido, M. J., Pescador, F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-08-2013; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Batteries; Battery; battery lifetime guarantee; Computer simulation; Energy consumption; energy management and energy-aware scheduling; Energy use; Linux; Mobile communication; Mobile communication systems; Queues; Real-time systems; Resource management; Scheduling; Software; Studies; time-constraint compliance; UNIX (operating system); user experience maximization; Windows (computer programs)
• ISSN: 0098-3063; 1558-4127
• DOI: 10.1109/TCE.2013.6626257

Currently, the usefulness of many mobile systems is largely limited by the battery lifetime. In this paper, energy-based fair queuing (EFQ) is proposed as a pivotal instrument to maximize the user experience in this type of system. Energy-based fair queuing is a novel class of energy-aware scheduling algorithms that support proportional energy use, effective time-constraint compliance and a flexible trade-off between them. The combination of EFQ with lifetime-oriented power management schemes opens the door to maximize the user experience of battery-limited mobile systems. Moreover, it is suggested to merge traditional energy-efficient algorithms with EFQ to further improve the user experience. The proposed EFQ algorithm is implemented in the Linux kernel V3.3 and verified on a testbench based on an open source Linux scheduler simulator with user-specified energy loads. Simulation results show that EFQ is more effective and flexible than the Linux scheduler in maximizing the user experience of energy-limited mobile systems.