Energy and quality of experience aware web browsing for smartphones

Abstract

In this paper we propose a framework for improving the web browsing experience of users by reducing battery energy consumption and webpage load time, while maintaining the quality of experience for the user. This is made possible through a collaborative protocol between the web server and the web client application that works using HTTP header fields. The innovation herein lies in dynamically creating multiple versions of the webpages that differ in their quality of content and size, and then delivering an appropriate version to the client based on metrics related to the webpage and the user's phone relevant specifications. These metrics include the user's battery consumption profile, user's network speed, the sizes of the different versions of the webpage, and the estimated energy consumption of the versions. We implemented a prototype and validated the system in terms of maintaining the battery profile and enhancing the load time of different webpages. The results indicate that over 50% reduction in power consumption and 80% reduction in speed requirements (and hence download times) can be achieved as a result of switching over to a lower quality version of the webpage that is still in line with the users’ experience. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.