Lossless Data Compression for Energy Efficient Transmission

Wireless networks are very fast replacing the traditional wired networking for the small and long distance area. With the rapid expansion in the data generation in the digital world and need for information sharing between the different stakeholders / collaborative members for business and scientific needs, today the volume of data being transmitted is also facing exponential growth. Wireless transmission of a single bit can require over 1000 times more energy than a single 32-bit computation. It can therefore be beneficial to perform additional computation to reduce the number of bits transmitted. If the energy required to compress data is less than the energy required to send it, there is a net energy savings and an increase in battery life for portable computers. This paper proposes energy savings possible by losslessly compressing data prior to transmission. The proposed work focuses that, with several typical compression algorithms, there is actually a net energy increase when compression is applied before transmission. Reasons for this increase are explained and proposal will be to avoid it.