Method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal by modifying timeout-before-standby duration, corresponding terminal and computer program

1. A method for reducing energy consumption of an electronic terminal, wherein said method comprises:

modifying a timeout-before-standby duration for said terminal after an action performed by or on said terminal at a current instant depending on membership of the current instant in a given temporal category, from among at least two predefined temporal categories, taking account of a parameter representing an estimated tolerance of a set of users of said terminal to a time lag in execution of an action by or on said terminal;

a preliminary phase of computing statistics on a number of actions performed by and/or on said terminal during a recurrent predetermined period, delivering a function x(t) variable as a function of time and representing an estimated number of actions during said predetermined period;

comparing, at a predetermined instant t, the value of the function x(t) with at least one predetermined threshold denoted as x 0 : and

wherein said predetermined threshold x 0 is a function of a penalty value α representing the estimated tolerance of the set of users of the terminal to a time lag for execution of an action by or on said terminal.

2. The method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal according to claim 1 , wherein said temporal categories are defined by at least one parameter belonging to the group consisting of:

a time slot in a day or a week; and

at least one day in a week or a month.

3. The method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal according to claim 1 , wherein the method comprises the following steps:

determining a timeout duration as a function of the result of said step of comparing.

4. The method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal according to claim 3 , wherein said method assigns two distinct durations to the timeout, depending on whether x(t) is smaller than or equal to the predetermined threshold x 0 , or whether x(t) is above the predetermined threshold x 0 .

5. The method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal according to claim 1 , wherein said predetermined threshold x0 is also a function of an energy value γ representing the energy consumed by the terminal during said predetermined period.

6. The method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal according to claim 1 , wherein said predetermined threshold x 0 is equal to

γ

α

.

7. The method for reducing the energy consumption of an electronic terminal according to claim 1 , wherein said terminal is an electronic payment terminal and said actions are transactions.

8. An electronic terminal, which comprises:

a timeout-before-standby duration;

means for modifying the timeout-before-standby duration after an action performed by or on said terminal at a current instant, depending on membership of the current instant in a given temporal category, from among at least two predefined temporal categories, taking account of a parameter representing an estimated tolerance of a set of users of said terminal to a time lag of execution of an action by said terminal;

means for computing statistics, a preliminary phase, on a number of actions performed by and/or on said terminal during a recurrent predetermined period, delivering a function x(t) variable as a function of time and representing an estimated number of actions during said predetermined period; and

means for comparing, at a predetermined instant t, the value of the function x(t) with at least one predetermined threshold denoted as x 0 , wherein said predetermined threshold x 0 is a function of a penalty value cc representing the estimated tolerance of the set of users of the terminal to a time lag for execution of an action by or on said terminal.

9. The electronic terminal according to claim 8 , wherein said terminal is an electronic payment terminal and said energy-consuming actions are transactions.

10. The electronic terminal of claim 8 , wherein the predetermined threshold x 0 is a function of an energy value γ representing the energy consumed by the terminal during said predetermined period.

11. A non-transitory computer-readable carrier comprising a computer program product recorded thereon and executable by a processor, wherein the product comprises program code instructions to implement a method for reducing the consumption of energy by an electronic terminal when the instructions are executed by the processor, wherein the method comprises:

modifying a timeout-before-standby duration for said terminal after an action performed by or on said terminal at a current instant depending on membership of the current instant in a given temporal category, from among at least two predefined temporal categories, taking account of a parameter representing an estimated tolerance of a set of users of said terminal to a time lag in execution of an action by or on said terminal;

a preliminary phase of computing statistics on a number of actions performed by and/or on said terminal during a recurrent predetermined period, delivering a function x(t) variable as a function of time and representing an estimated number of actions during said predetermined period; and

comparing, at a predetermined instant t, the value of the function x(t) with at least one predetermined threshold denoted as x 0 ; wherein said predetermined threshold x 0 is a function of a penalty value γ representing the estimated tolerance of the set of users of the terminal to a time lag for execution of an action by or on said terminal.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable carrier of claim 11 , wherein the predetermined threshold x 0 is a function of an energy value γ representing the energy consumed by the terminal during said predetermined period.