Instant Messaging (IM) Applications Energy Consumption

Here we provide instructions to run the Android Runner experiments which measure the energy consumption of WhatsApp and Telegram.

Interaction File

The interaction.py file contains experiment coordination code. It contains two methods whatsapp_script() and tg_script() which authenticate to the API of each respective application and send the messages programatically. These methods take the same 3 parameters:

1. num_of_msgs: total number of messages to send during the run
2. sleep_btw_msgs: time between each message (if applies)
3. burst: whether the messages should be sent all at once or not

The main function contains the looped call to those methods. It also contains the logic to ensure that each run has the same duration. Finally, it contains the variables that specify the conditions of the run:

1. run_duration: run duration in seconds (set to 300 seconds to reproduce the results of our experiments)
2. sleep_btw_msgs: time between messages in seconds
3. num_of_msgs: total number of messages to send

Setup for Experiment

In order to reproduce the results of our experiments, follow the instructions given below to give the correct values to each variable

• RQ 1

For this experiment the variables in main must be set as follows:

1. run_duration: 300
2. num_of_msgs: (msg per minute in treatment) * 5
3. sleep_btw_msgs: run_duration / num_of_messages

In the IM script method the burst parameter must be set to False.

For example, the values for treatment 1 would be:

num_of_msgs = 10 * 5 = 50

sleep_btw_msgs = 300 / 50 = 6

burst: False

• RQ 2

For this experiment, the same as above applies for Treatment 1.

For Treatment 2, the burst parameter must be set to True. You may pass a value to sleep_btw_msgs but it will be ignored.

For example, the values for Treatment 2 would be:

num_of_msgs = 50 * 5 = 250

sleep_btw_msgs = None

burst: True