Towards Energy Efficient Multi-Hop D2D Networks Using WiFi Direct

WiFi Direct is a new technology that enables direct Device-to Device (D2D) communication. This technology has a great potential to enable various proximity-based applications such as multimedia content distribution, social networking, cellular traffic offloading, mission critical communications, and Internet of Things (IoT). However, in such applications, energy consumption of battery-constrained devices is a major concern. In this paper, we propose a novel power saving protocol that aims at optimizing energy consumption and throughput of user devices by controlling the WiFi Direct group size and transmit power of the devices. We model a content distribution scenario in NS-3 and present the performance evaluation. Our simulation results demonstrate that even a small modification in the network configuration can provide a considerable energy gain with a minor effect on throughput. The observed energy saving can be as high as 1000% for a throughput loss of 12%.