The massive explosion of mobile applications with the ensuing data exchange over the cellular infrastructure is not only a blessing to the mobile user but also has a price in terms of regular discharging of the device battery. A big contributor to this energy consumption is the power hungry wireless network interface. We leverage a measurement kit to perform accurate physical energy consumption measurements in a third generation (3G) telecommunication modem thus isolating the energy footprint of data transfers as opposed to other mobile phone-based measurement studies. Using the measurement kit we show how the statically configured network parameters, i.e., channel switch timers, and buffer thresholds, in addition to the transfer data pattern and the radio coverage, impact the communication energy footprint. We then demonstrate that being aware of static network parameters creates room for energy savings. This is done by devising a set of algorithms that (a) infer the network parameters efficiently, and (b) use the parameters in a new packet scheduler in the device. The combined regime is shown to transfer background uplink data, from real world traces of Facebook and Skype, with significant energy saving compared to the state-of-the-art.
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