Technology Licensing View

Researchers at the University of South Florida have developed a method to reduce the energy used by client electronic devices connected to the Internet. The method can increase battery life in smart phones.

The energy consumed by Information Technology (IT) is of growing concern. In an attempt to minimize the consumption of energy, USF inventors have developed an apparatus and method for automatically selecting the optimal local communication channel from a plurality of channels.

This invention makes uses of multiple network interfaces, or “channels”, by selecting the channel with lowest energy consumption that also meets a specific performance threshold. For a PC that has both Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces, this invention would automatically test for link bottlenecks and then select either Wi-Fi or Ethernet in such a manner as to reduce energy use and still meet a desired file download time. For a smart phone with both Wi-Fi and cellular data service, this invention would optimally select either Wi-Fi of cellular data service. This invention will be very useful in environments where energy is scarce and costly, and where data rates fluctuate.

This invention will be of value to any vendor of operating systems, applications, and client devices, including vendors of smart phones, tablets, and PCs, that have multiple network interfaces that allow connection to the Internet. The broad scope of this invention is in the area of “green computing.”