Energy reduction appears as a crucial need in modern telecommunications, be it for the terminals or the network. In modern networks, a terminal can connect to the Internet through other terminals or infrastructures in their proximity, called relays. Even though these relays appear as an interesting solution by limiting the terminals transmission power output, the reduction of energy consumption is not a simple task to ensure. Hence, it becomes necessary to develop adapted tools in order to evaluate and quantify the energy consumption. A modern terminal features several communication interfaces, which allows it to use different standards. With each standard featuring different communication modes, a multi-mode terminal has the capacity to communicate on these different modes and standard available. Hence, we have been studying how this multi-mode property can lead to energy reduction in combination with relaying. Our study is realized in the context of software defined radio, in which the physical layer is represented by programmable software blocks. Thus, software defined radio allows an eased implementation of multi-mode. In order to estimate the energy consumption of a software defined radio, we have evaluated the algorithmic complexity for the physical layers of the following standards : 802.11g (or Wi-Fi), UMTS and 802.15.4 (or Zigbee). In this thesis, we have developed the tools to evaluate the energy consumption of a multimode relay. Firstly, we have proposed a realistic energy model for multi-mode, which takes into account the media access control layer of the protocols studied. In order to increase realism, we have implemented multi-mode in WSNet, a precise network simulator, which we have used to determine the parameters impacting the energy consumption. Then, we have proposed and validated different strategies allowing us to minimize the influence of these parameters.
