Sparring Partners | How energy efficient is Wi-Fi?

We had many Sparring Partners on energy efficiency in wireless, but none was on Wi-Fi. This is a glaring omission since Wi-Fi accounts for the majority of wireless traffic – in most countries, it hovers at around 80% of wireless traffic. Yet, there is much less data (and debate) on Wi-Fi energy efficiency than on 5G or LTE – and there are reasons for this.

Claus Hetting at Wi-Fi NOW helped us fill this gap in the next Sparring Partners. We debated on the energy efficiency of Wi-Fi, and on how it compares to that of 5G and LTE. We also talked about how efficiency changes in different use scenarios and how we should measure efficiency.

Once you register, you can watch the entire discussion, or choose among these sections (and get links to the reports we discuss):

• 00:55 Introduction
• 02:54 Claus introduces himself
• 03:34 Energy efficiency and energy consumption
• 04:08 6GHZ and energy efficiency
• 05:51 Reports by WIK sponsored by the Wi-Fi Alliance and by Analysys Mason sponsored by Huawei
• 07:49 Router and AP power consumption, compared to 5G
• 09:54 Complexity in assessing energy efficiency, macro/outdoor versus indoor coverage
• 11:21 Is there a market for small cells?
• 13:15 How to compare Wi-Fi to 5G/cellular
• 14:18 Would operators deploy 5G in the 6GHz in scale?
• 15:44 Wi-Fi APs don’t use much energy, sleep mechanisms
• 20:59 Is indoor more efficient than outdoor infrastructure?
• 24:32 Offload, power and propagation limitations in 6GHz
• 25:51 Offload benefits everybody
• 27:01 Don’t overuse sleep mechanisms
• 28:38 Cellular indoor coverage is not good enough
• 29:36 Managing sleep in Wi-Fi
• 33:59 Comments on the WIK / Wi-Fi Alliance report
• 35:41 Comments on the Analysys Mason / Huawei report
• 36:46 What mmWave teaches us, spectrum sharing
• 40:03 Quoting Ajit Pai on offload
• 41:11 More on offload and on switching between Wi-Fi and cellular (much better than it used to be), PassPoint
• 47:19 Orange report on Wi-Fi efficiency is very good
• 49:37 Energy efficiency of FTTH, the incremental impact of adding a smartphone to the home network
• 51:07 Do models help us understand energy efficiency?
• 51:43 “Reporting instead of doing is greenwashing,” the Orange report says
• 53:52 Ofcom says 73% of Android traffic is through Wi-Fi
• 56:05 Easier to reduce energy consumption by reducing travel than cutting on Wi-Fi
• 58:21 Upcoming Wi-Fi NOW events