This paper presents a survey on the various power saving techniques used in wireless networking today. The work presented covers topics ranging from the use of energy harvesting techniques at the physical layer to partitioning the load of power hungry computations across multiple devices at the application layer. While research in this area continues to grow, few standards have yet to emerge that incorporate the use of each of these techniques. De facto standards do exist, however, and tend to be driving the development of power aware devices in industry at the moment.
This paper explores the various techniques used for preserving the energy consumed at each layer of a wireless networking protocol stack. The types of wireless networks considered include Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs), and Wireless Sensor Networks. Standards existing for performing power management in each of these networks are discussed, and their effective use is analyzed. The role that these standards play in industry as well as the role played by current research in this area is also introduced.