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.