CS G250: Wireless Networks

Spring 2005

The term project for the course can be either the development of a simple node-counting application on a mote-based sensor network, or a survey project. The deliverables in each case are listed below.

Sensor Network Project

In this project, you will develop code to set up a spanning tree in a sensor network rooted at the base station, and then use the spanning tree to count the number of sensor nodes in the network reachable from the base station. The code will be developed over the TinyOS environment and can be run on a 8-node MICAz mote network (developed by Crossbow Technologies based on a design by researchers at UC Berkeley) that we have recently acquired. The deliverables are:

Your code, due by Wednesday, April 13.
A demonstration on the 8-node sensor network, during the last week of classes (exact date to be determined).

Details of the programming assignment are available here.

Survey Project

If you choose to do a survey, you should select a topic from one below or propose one of your own, review relevant literature, and present a synopsis of the key technical issues, challenges, and results in the area. The deliverables are:

A report of at most 5 pages (11-12 pt font size, at least 1 inch margin on all sides, single-spacing). This is due Wednesday, April 13.
A 20-30 minute presentation during the last week of classes (exact date to be determined).

Sample Survey Projects

Third generation wireless systems and beyond: This project will survey the key technical considerations of third and future generation wireless systems. Technical details at the MAC and physical layers of WCDMA, EV-DO, etc., could be covered. A good starting point is Section 10.5 of the text, followed by recent references listed there.

Synchronization in sensor networks: Many protocols for sensor networks assume tight synchronization among sensor nodes. This project will survey recent proposals for time synchronization in sensornets.

Optimal and Global Time Synchronization in Sensornets, R. Karp and J. Elson and D. Estrin and S. Shenker, CENS technical report, 2003
Timing-sync Protocol for Sensor Networks, Ganirewal, S. and Kumar, R. and Srivastava, M., ACM SENSYS 2003.
Fine-grained network time synchronization using reference broadcasts, Jeremy Elson and Lewis Girod and Deborah Estrin, SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. volume 36, pages 147--163, 2002.

Mobile IPv6: This project will discuss the problems with Mobile IP and support for mobility that is integrated into IPv6. A starting point is the following Internet draft:

Mobility support for IP, by D. Johnson, C. Perkins, and J. Arkko, 2003.

Secure routing in ad hoc networks: The ad hoc network routing protocols that we studied in class did not consider issues of security. A number of research efforts are underway in developing "secure" versions of existing protocols, as well as other new schemes. This project will survey the technical challenges and the proposed work.

SEAD: Secure Efficient Distance Vector Routing for Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Yih-Chun Hu, David B. Johnson, and Adrian Perrig, Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems & Applications (WMCSA 2002).
Ariadne: A secure On-Demand Routing Protocol for Ad hoc Networks, Yih-Chun Hu, Adrian Perrig, David B. Johnson. MobiCom 2002.
Secure Routing for Mobile Ad hoc Networks, Panagiotis Papadimitratos and Zygmunt J. Haas, SCS Communication Networks and Distributed Systems Modeling and Simulation Conference (CNDS 2002).

Energy-efficient broadcasting in ad hoc networks: In this survey, we will consider the problem of broadcasting in ad hoc wireless networks with the aim of minimizing the total energy consumption needed for the broadcast. A number of centralized algorithms, and a few distributed schemes, have been proposed. This project will explore the algorithmic challenges and the effectiveness of the proposed work.

Minimum-energy broadcast in all-wireless networks: NP-completeness and distribution issues, M. Zagalj and J.-P. Hubaux and C. Enz, MOBICOM 2002.
On the Construction of Energy-Efficient Broadcast and Multicast Trees in Wireless Networks, J. Wieselthier and G. Nguyen and A. Ephremides, INFOCOM, 2000.
Minimum-Energy Broadcast Routing in Static Ad Hoc Wireless Networks, P. Wan and G. Calinescu and X. Li and O. Frieder, INFOCOM 2001.

Security in IEEE 802.11: This project will review security issues in IEEE 802.11. Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and IEEE 802.11i are two topics to cover in this regard. Two relevant articles are:

Directional Antenna Systems in Ad Hoc Networking: This project will survey the technical problems and solutions to increasing ad hoc network capacity using directional antenna systems. A starting point is a tutorial given by Ram Ramanathan, Mineo Takai, and Nitin Vaidya at Mobihoc 2003. An abstract is available here.

Power control in CDMA cellular systems: This project surveys the current state of the art in power control in CDMA systems, and ongoing research in this area. A research article by El-Osery and Abdallah is available here.

Presentations

Graham Higgins
Maulik Bakhai
Neelam Bendre
Nachiket Mehta