Wake on wireless: an event driven energy saving strategy for battery operated devices
Proceedings of the 8th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Asynchronous wakeup for ad hoc networks
Proceedings of the 4th ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing
Radio-Triggered Wake-Up for Wireless Sensor Networks
Real-Time Systems
Proceedings of the 15th international conference on World Wide Web
Validity of the single processor approach to achieving large scale computing capabilities
AFIPS '67 (Spring) Proceedings of the April 18-20, 1967, spring joint computer conference
A prototype low-cost wakeup radio for the 868 MHz band
International Journal of Sensor Networks
Skilled in the art of being idle: reducing energy waste in networked systems
NSDI'09 Proceedings of the 6th USENIX symposium on Networked systems design and implementation
Community Computing: Comparisons between Rural and Urban Societies Using Mobile Phone Data
CSE '09 Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering - Volume 04
Wake-up receivers for wireless sensor networks: benefits and challenges
IEEE Wireless Communications
Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions
Breathe to stay cool: adjusting cell sizes to reduce energy consumption
Proceedings of the first ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Green networking
Long Idle: Making Idle Networks Quiet for Platform Energy-Efficiency
ICSNC '10 Proceedings of the 2010 Fifth International Conference on Systems and Networks Communications
WiLdnet: design and implementation of high performancewifi based long distance networks
NSDI'07 Proceedings of the 4th USENIX conference on Networked systems design & implementation
Traffic-driven power saving in operational 3G cellular networks
MobiCom '11 Proceedings of the 17th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Raabta: low-cost video conferencing for the developing world
Proceedings of the 2013 ACM MobiCom workshop on Lowest cost denominator networking for universal access
Bringing visibility to rural users in Cote d'Ivoire
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development: Notes - Volume 2
An experiment in reducing cellular base station power draw with virtual coverage
Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Computing for Development
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The cellular system is the world's largest network, providing service to over five billion people. Operators of these networks face fundamental trade-offs in coverage, capacity and operating power. These trade-offs, when coupled with the reality of infrastructure in poorer areas, mean that upwards of a billion people lack access to this fundamental service. Limited power infrastructure, in particular, hampers the economic viability of wide-area rural coverage. In this work, we present an alternative system for implementing large-scale rural cellular networks. Rather than providing constant coverage, we instead provide virtual coverage: coverage that is only present when requested. Virtual coverage powers the network on-demand, which reduces overall power draw, lowers the cost of rural connectivity, and enables new markets. We built a prototype cellular system utilizing virtual coverage by modifying a GSM base station and a set of Motorola phones to support making and receiving calls under virtual coverage. To support the billions of already-deployed devices, we also implemented a small radio capable of adding backwards-compatible support for virtual coverage to existing GSM handsets. We demonstrate a maximum of 84% power and cost savings from using virtual coverage. We also evaluated virtual coverage by simulating the potential power savings on real-world cellular networks in two representative developing counties: one in sub-Saharan Africa and one in South Asia. Simulating power use based on realworld call records obtained from local mobile operators, we find our system saves 21-34% of power draw at night, and 7-21% during the day. We expect even more savings in areas currently off the grid. These results demonstrate the feasibility of implementing such a system, particularly in areas with solar or otherwise-intermittent power sources.