Meaning
Power conservation mechanisms that allow a device to request a lower power state improve battery life. Implementing fast dormancy reduces the time the radio remains in a high-power consumption mode while waiting for the network to release the connection.
Power Conservation
Battery life improves when the device can signal the network to drop the radio resource control connection immediately. Without fast dormancy, the cellular module might stay in a high-power state for several seconds after the last packet is sent. This function is effective for background applications that send frequent small bursts of data.
Network Coordination
Requests for state changes are sent by the device but must be acknowledged by the cellular base station. If the network does not support fast dormancy, the device must wait for the inactivity timers controlled by the carrier to expire. Modern protocols such as those found in fourth and fifth generation networks incorporate this feature into the standard to manage network signaling load more effectively.
This coordination prevents the device from dropping connections too aggressively and causing excessive reconnection attempts.
Protocol Overhead
Frequent signaling of dormancy state increases the total traffic on the control channel. Excessive use of fast dormancy might be throttled by network operators to protect overall system capacity.
