With the proliferation of portable computing platforms and small wireless devices, wireless networks have received more and more attention as a means for providing data communications among devices regardless of their physical locations. However, due to the slow advancement in battery technology, battery power continues to be a constrained resource in wireless networks and thus energy conservation remains to be an important issue. In this book chapter, we provide a taxonomy of power management and power control algorithms and protocols for wireless networks. We start with a description of energy consumption characteristics of wireless devices, and identify the power consumed in the wireless transmitters essentially consists of two parts: power consumed by the radio electronic and power consumed in the RF output. To save power, one can either turn off the radio electronic and put wireless devices into the power saving mode at appropriate times, or adjust the RF output power (and hence the wireless transmission range) subject to maintaining network connectivity and bi-directionality. The former techniques are termed as power management, while the latter power control. For each category, we then state the performance objectives, present representative, state-of-the-art algorithms and protocols in both wireless infrastructure and infrastructureless (a.k.a. ad hoc) networks, and discuss their advantages and drawbacks.
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