Energy-efficient wireless ATM design

Energy efficiency is an important issue for mobile computers since they mus t rely on their batteries. We present an architecture for wireless ATM and a novel MAC protocol that achieves a good energy efficiency of the wireless interface of the mobile and provides QoS support for diverse traffic types . The scheduler of the base station is responsible for providing the requir ed QoS to connections on the wireless link and to minimize the amount of en ergy spent by the mobile. The main principles used are to avoid unsuccessfu l actions, to minimize the number of transitions, and to synchronize the mo bile and the base station. In the protocol the actions of the mobile are mi nimized. The base station with plenty of energy performs actions in courtes y of the mobile. We have paid much attention in reducing the cost for a mob ile of just being connected. The protocol is able to provide near-optimal e nergy efficiency (i.e., energy is spent for the actual transfer only) for a mobile within the constraints of the QoS of all connections in a cell, and only requires a small overhead.