[thataaa2u]

I've been working on trying to optimize power consumption for antennas on an Asus RT-N16 router.
The firmware installed is:
DD-WRT v24-sp2 mega (c) 2011 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 05/08/11 (SVN revision: 16994)

I have several questions:
1.) How can I control power drawn by the antennas?
2.) Is it possible to control the transmit antenna power separately from the receiving antenna? (Yes, I know about wl txpwr, if this is relevent).
3.) Is there a better router that allows for better control of the antennas?

To begin with, I measured the power consumption of the entire router without any connections or adjustments for an entire minute, giving a current draw of roughly 342mA. The voltage was constant around 12.3V.
Before and after this test, I ran wl txpwr1, which returned the milliwatt power as 17mW in both cases.

Then, I used this command to set the transmit power of the antennas as low as possible:
wl txpwr1 -m 1
I again ran wl txpwr1 and the power to the antenna was returned as 1mW, as expected.
This time, however, the current draw was 402mA, which is (significantly) higher than before. (The voltage was again around 12.3V). This is counter-intuitive to me. How does reducing the transmit power cause more current to be drawn?
I know that there may be a power-management already implemented, which might explain this discrepency. If this is the case, how can I customize the manager?
If anyone knows where to look for the source code that handles either the antennas or the power manager, or otherwise has some advice, I'd appreciate it.

A lot of questions, thanks in advance!