[ACM]
Energy consumption of mobile devices is a great concern and streaming applications are among the most power hungry ones. We evaluate the energy saving potential of shaping streaming traffic into bursts before transmitting it over 3G and LTE networks to smartphones. The idea is that in between the bursts, the phone has sufficient time to switch from the high-power active state to low-power states. We investigate the impact of the network parameters, namely inactivity timers and discontinuous reception, on the achievable energy savings and on the radio access network signaling load. The results confirm that traffic shaping is an effective way to save energy, even up to 60% of energy saved when streaming music over LTE. However, we note large differences in the signaling load. LTE with discontinuous reception and long inactivity timer value achieves the energy savings with no extra signaling load, whereas non-standard Fast Dormancy in 3G can multiply the signaling traffic by a factor of ten.