  In this paper, we revisit the idea of putting interfaces to sleep during
'packet overhearing' (i.e., when there are ongoing transmissions addressed to
other stations) from a practical standpoint. To this aim, we perform a robust
experimental characterisation of the timing and consumption behaviour of a
commercial 802.11 card. We design $\mu$Nap, a local standard-compliant
energy-saving mechanism that leverages micro-sleep opportunities inherent to
the CSMA operation of 802.11 WLANs. This mechanism is backwards compatible and
incrementally deployable, and takes into account the timing limitations of
existing hardware, as well as practical CSMA-related issues (e.g., capture
effect). According to the performance assessment carried out through
trace-based simulation, the use of our scheme would result in a 57% reduction
in the time spent in overhearing, thus leading to an energy saving of 15.8% of
the activity time.
