How much power do you expect to save? I mean, standard star topology WiFi uses less power than a 3G radio. But you don't access a mesh network, you are part of

How much power do you expect to save? I mean, standard star topology WiFi uses less power than a 3G radio. But you don't access a mesh network, you are part of a mesh network. Your radio will be constantly relaying information. Sounds pretty power-hungry to me. It's a lot like BitTorrent, where on average everyone must seed as much as they leech, except in this case every packet is relayed N times. So for a healthy network, everyone must relay N times as much as they consume.