Energy-efficient on-the-fly Wi-Fi hotspot using mobile devices

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9253720-B2
Application number	US-201314021135-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 9, 2013
Priority date	Jul 29, 2010
Publication date	Feb 2, 2016
Grant date	Feb 2, 2016

Abstract

One or more mobile devices and a cloud server computing device are utilized to provide Internet access to one or more client computing devices. One of the clients is designated as a Wi-Fi access point. The Wi-Fi access point implements a reverse-infrastructure Wi-Fi mode which tethers available mobile devices and other clients to the access point. The cloud server periodically computes an optimal number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping, and transmits a webpage to a requesting client by striping data associated with the webpage across the optimal number of the mobile devices.

First claim

Wherefore, what is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented process for utilizing a cloud server computer to deliver a webpage to a requesting client computer via a plurality of mobile devices, comprising:
using the cloud server computer to perform the following process actions:
periodically computing a number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping; and
transmitting the webpage to the requesting client computer by striping data associated with the webpage across the number of the mobile devices.

2. The process of claim 1 , wherein the process action of periodically computing the number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping comprises the actions of:
periodically transmitting at a prescribed interval of time a query to each of the mobile devices to learn its residual battery life, wherein said transmission occurs over a wireless wide area network (WWAN);
receiving residual battery life data from each of the mobile devices;
identifying any mobile devices having a residual battery life that is below a prescribed threshold and eliminating such mobile devices, resulting in a subset of mobile devices;
identifying any mobile devices in said subset that are not currently idle and further eliminating such devices, resulting in a set of currently eligible mobile devices;
computing an optimal number of the currently eligible mobile devices to be used for data striping (n s — optimal ); and
equating the optimal number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping to n s — optimal .

3. The process of claim 2 , wherein the prescribed interval of time is 30 seconds.

4. The process of claim 2 , wherein,
the process action of periodically computing an optimal number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping further comprises an action of determining which of the mobile devices has the highest residual battery life, and
the prescribed threshold is five percent of the maximum capacity of the battery in the mobile device having the highest residual battery life.

5. The process of claim 2 , wherein the optimal number of the currently eligible mobile devices to be used for data striping (n s — optimal ) is given by the equation

n
s_optimal

=

min
(

n
,

(

n
·

P
base

·
S

)

(

E
setup

·
B

)

)

,

wherein n is the total number of currently eligible mobile devices, P base is the base power consumed by a given currently eligible mobile device when it is not being used for data striping, S is the number of bits of data that are associated with the webpage, E setup is a fixed component of a radio energy cost associated with using a given currently eligible mobile device for data striping, and B is the speed at which a given currently eligible mobile device transfers data over the WWAN.

6. The process of claim 1 , wherein the process action of transmitting the webpage to the requesting client computer by striping data associated with the webpage across the number of mobile devices comprises the actions of:
partitioning the data associated with the webpage into prescribed sized chunks;
tagging each chunk with a sequence number; and
transmitting the chunks to the requesting client computer by sequentially striping the chunks across the number of the mobile devices.

7. The process of claim 6 , wherein the process action of partitioning the data associated with the webpage into prescribed sized chunks comprises using an Hypertext Transfer Protocol byte-range mechanism.

8. The process of claim 6 , wherein the chunks are transmitted to the requesting client in a single burst.

9. A system for utilizing a cloud server computer to deliver a webpage to a requesting client computer via a plurality of mobile devices, comprising:
a cloud server computer; and
a computer program having program modules executable by the computing device, the cloud server computer being directed by the program modules of the computer program to,
periodically compute a number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping; and
transmit the webpage to the requesting client computer by striping data associated with the webpage across the number of the mobile devices.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the program module for periodically computing the number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping comprises sub-modules for:
periodically transmitting at a prescribed interval of time a query to each of the mobile devices to learn its residual battery life, wherein said transmission occurs over a wireless wide area network (WWAN);
receiving residual battery life data from each of the mobile devices;
identifying any mobile devices having a residual battery life that is below a prescribed threshold and eliminating such mobile devices, resulting in a subset of mobile devices;
identifying any mobile devices in said subset that are not currently idle and further eliminating such devices, resulting in a set of currently eligible mobile devices;
computing an optimal number of the currently eligible mobile devices to be used for data striping (n s — optimal ); and
equating the optimal number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping to n s — optimal .

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the program module for periodically computing an optimal number of the mobile devices to be used for data striping further comprises sub-modules for:
determining which of the mobile devices has the highest residual battery life; and
establishing the prescribed threshold to be five percent of the maximum capacity of the battery in the mobile device having the highest residual battery life.

12. The system of claim 10 , wherein the prescribed interval of time is 30 seconds.

13. The system of claim 10 , wherein the optimal number of the currently eligible mobile devices to be used for data striping (n s — optimal ) is given by the equation

n
s_optimal

=

min
(

n
,

(

n
·

Assignees

• Microsoft Corp
• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Navda Vishnu
• Ramjee Ramachandran
• Padmanabhan Venkata N
• Sharma Ashish

Classifications

• H04W88/04

  adapted for relaying to or from another terminal or user · CPC title

• H04W52/0203 Primary

  in the radio access network or backbone network of wireless communication networks · CPC title

• Y02B60/50

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• H04W80/12

  Application layer protocols, e.g. WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] · CPC title

• H04W4/003

  Electricity · mapped topic