WASHINGTON: A Duke University student, under the direction of an Indian assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has found a new system to double the battery life of mobile devices.
According to Justin Manweiler, the system named SleepWell enables smartphones and laptop computers to work for longer hours by making changes to the Wi-Fi technology.
He explained that the energy drain in these gadgets is severe in the presence of other Wi-Fi devices in the neighborhood.
In such cases, each device has to ‘stay awake’ before it gets its turn to download a small piece of the desired information.
For instance, the battery drainage in downloading a movie in Manhattan is far higher than downloading the same movie in a farmhouse in the Midwest, the researchers said.
However, the Duke-developed software eliminates this problem by allowing mobile devices to sleep while a neighboring device is downloading information.
This not only saves energy for the sleeping device, but also for competing devices as well.
“Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same,” said Manweiler.