Energy efficiency of TCP: an analytical model and its application to reduce energy consumption of the most diffused transport protocol

Energy efficient communications become a challenge for both industries and researchers. Incorporating energy efficiency into the design of network protocols and architectures represents a relevant issue in networking research. Currently, very few works address energy efficiency as a fundamental feature of network protocols. This paper benchmarks energy efficiency of TCP to understand the parameters and operational mechanics that determine and contribute to energy consumption. We propose an analytical model with energy consumption to protocol operation cycles and novel optimization techniques for reducing energy consumption of TCP. The evaluation results, obtained from NS2 simulations, demonstrate that even minor modifications of the protocol behavior can bring significant savings of energy. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.