CS G250: Wireless Networks

Spring 2007 Term Project

Types of Projects

The Term Project may be one of three types:
Also included below, for each project type, is a list of sample projects.  If you have any questions about any of these, just let me know, and I can direct you to some pointers that I may be aware of.  You are very welcome to propose a project of your own.  As I had mentioned in class, there is limited support available for purchasing equipment that you may need for your project.

Deadlines:
Guidelines for the term project and grading criteria

Survey or Theoretical Project


A term project under this category consists of either the survey of a topic related to wireless networks based on an extensive literature
survey or study of a theoretical research problem.

Number of students per project: 1

Deliverables:

  1. When printed, an 8-page report, single-spaced with 1 inch margin on all sides, 11-12pt.
  2. A 20-minute presentation in mid-April.
Sample Survey/Theoretical Research Projects

Advanced error-correcting codes: This project will explain the theoretical underpinings of Turbo codes, LDPC codes, and Slepian
codes, specifically discussed in the context of wireless communications.

Delay-tolerant networking: Study the capacity of mobile peer-to-peer networks (e.g., vehicular networks) to provide delay-tolerant networking services.  Survey models for network topology and user traffic and either work on a theoretical research problem or report on existing literature.

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.

Synchronization in sensor networks: Many protocols for sensor networks assume tight synchronization among sensor nodes.  This project will survey and critique recent proposals for time synchronization in sensornets. Radio Frequency Idenitication Tags (RFID): This project will survey RFIDs, RFID networks, and localization mechanisms using
RFID tags.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio communications:  Survey of UWB technology and its potential use in personal area networks

Multiple antennas and space diversity: Survey of Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) systems and analysis of their spectral efficiency gains

Simulation-Based Analysis Project

A term project under this category studies in depth a class of protocols or solutions to wireless networking problems.  The main
component of this project will be a collection of simulation experiments that capture well-motivated models for the transmission
environment and user traffic.  The simulations could be done using widely-used network simulation packages such as ns-2, Glomosim, Qualnet, or by setting up an appropriate simulation environment.

Number of students per project:  Up to 2

Deliverables:

  1. When printed, an 8-page report, single-spaced with 1 inch margin on all sides, 11-12pt.
  2. A 20-30 minutes presentation in mid-April
Sample Simulation Projects


Security of WiMAX:  Study the security of WiMAX with respect to denial of service attacks. Develop a suitable simulation environment for evaluating key parts of WiMAX.

Capacity of ad hoc networks: A simulation study of the capacity of ad hoc networks exploring different scenarios, including exploiting the mobility of nodes, and the presence of a small number of infrastructure nodes.

Event notification in sensor networks: Study the performance of algorithms for event notification in sensor networks.  Develop suitable models for event generation and queries, and evaluate algorithms proposed in the literature, and their variants.

Network coding in ad hoc wireless networks: Study network coding techniques and their effect on the capacity of ad hoc wireless networks.  Simulate recently proposed algorithms and report on tradeoffs among delay, complexity, and throughput.


Prototype Development Project

This term project involves the development of a prototype that demonstrates some wireless networking functionality.

Number of students per project: Up to 3

Deliverables:

  1. When printed, a report of up to 5 pages, single-spaced with 1 inch margin on all sides, 11-12p, giving an overview of the prototype, its capabilities, and possible future enhancements
  2. Demonstration of the prototype in mid-April
  3. Zipped source code, other auxiliary files, and documentation

Sample Prototype Projects

Sensor database: Develop a sensor database application using a network of sensor motes that allows users to query the network for parameters being measured by the sensors.  The sensor motes available in our lab could be used for this prototype.

Locating a transmitter by triangulation: Identify the location of a transmitter by using signal strengths at multiple nearby receivers, and develop a location service.  The sensor motes available in our lab could be used for this prototype.

Covert communication by setting up a timing channel: Two nodes that are out of range communicate through an access point
without authentication, by setting up a timing channel (making use of the broadcast capability of the access point).

Routing in a Bluetooth scatternet: Demonstrate communication across multiple piconets in a Bluetooth scatternet.

Receiver diversity/opportunistic MIMO: Demonstrate how signals from the same source received at more than one receiver can be combined to recover the signal data, when none of the individual received signals suffice.

Multi-player games: Such a project is primarily about mobile computing applications, not about wireless communications, per se.  But it is a useful way to gain expertise in J2ME programming and underlying wireless communication interfaces.

Guidelines

The grading for the term projects will be based on the following criteria.  Please note that the criteria serve primarily as subjective guidelines for accomplishing your project.

Distribution of points (total 30):
Criteria for report:
Criteria for prototype package:
Criteria for simulation package:
Criteria for presentation/demo: