A case for preamble compression in multi-clock-rate sampling devices for energy efficient idle listening

The state of the art in wireless communication is highly spectrum efficient but performs poorly in terms of energy efficiency. With widespread deployment, battery operated devices, escalating energy cost, and inherent energy inefficiency of the Carrier Sense Multiple Access protocol in wireless, it is of prime importance today to look for improved energy efficiency in wireless communication. One promising solution is to use multi clock-rate sampling devices in conjunction with frequency agnostic preamble detection. This reduces the power consumed by wireless devices in idle listening , without significantly affecting the throughput and spectrum efficiency. In this paper, we model such a device as a Markov chain and determine its performance in terms of power consumption and goodput, and discuss the elemental trade-off between the two. The analytical results are verified using extensive simulation and compared with existing techniques. A preamble construction scheme that allows devices with different downclocking levels to coexist in the same network is also explored. Finally, we propose a novel preamble compression scheme based on Robust Header Compression to provide improved performance and scalability.