A-GPS Assisted Wi-Fi Access Point Discovery on Mobile Devices for Energy Saving

Abstract: Mobile devices have been shipped with multiple wireless network interfaces in order to meet their diverse communication and networking demands. In this paper, we propose an A-GPS assisted scheme that discovers the nearest Wi-Fi network access points (APs) by using user's location information. This allows the user to switch to the Wi-Fi interface in an intelligent manner when she/he arrives at the nearest Wi-Fi network AP. Therefore, it avoids the long periods in idle state and greatly reduces the number of unnecessary Wi-Fi scans on the mobile device. The experimental results demonstrate that our scheme effectively saves energy for mobile devices integrated with Wi-Fi and cellular interfaces.