An important feature of a modern mobile device is that it can position itself. Not only for use on the device but also for remote applications that require tracking of the device. To be useful, such position tracking has to be energy-efficient to avoid having a major impact on the battery life of the mobile device. Furthermore, tracking has to robustly deliver position updates when faced with changing conditions such as delays due to positioning and communication, and changing positioning accuracy. This work proposes EnTracked -a system that, based on the estimation and prediction of system conditions and mobility, schedules position updates to both minimize energy consumption and optimize robustness. The realized system tracks pedestrian targets equipped with GPS-enabled devices. The system is configurable to realize different tradeoffs between energy consumption and robustness. We provide extensive experimental results by profiling how devices consume power, by emulation on collected data and by validation in several real-world deployments. Results from this profiling show how a device consumes power while tracking its position. Results from the emulation indicate that the system can estimate and predict system conditions and mobility. Furthermore they provide evidence for that the system can lower the energy consumption considerably and remain robust when faced with changing system conditions. By validation in several real-world deployments we provide evidence that the real system works as predicted by the emulation.
EnTracked REF adjusts the GPS sampling rate based on the estimation and prediction of system conditions and mobility.
EnTracked: energy-efficient robust position tracking for mobile devices
MobiSys '09
Computer Science