General

Instructor:	Chen-Nee Chuah
	3125 Kemper Hall (EUII)
Office Hours:	Thu 12:10-1:30pm
Lectures:	Tue/Thu 9:00 - 10:20 am, 1007 Giedt Hall
Lab Discussion:	Thu 10:30-11:20 am, 2107 Kemper Hall
Class Mailing List:	wireless-s09@ucdavis.edu
TA:	Xiaohui Ye (xye at ucdavis dot edu)
TA office hour:	Tue 3-5pm

Prerequisite

• EEC173A/ECS152A,
  or taken concurrently with approval of the instructor

Overview

This course consists of hands-on design capstone projects in communication networks for undergraduates in computer engineering and computer science majors. The goal of the course is to provide undergraduate students with experience in cutting-edge technology research. The advanced topics discuss may vary from year to year, and examples include: wireless networks, multimedia networking, network design and management, traffic analysis and modeling, network simulations and performance analysis.

For Spring 2009, we will focus on wireless/mobile networking and applications. We will cover basic principles of wireless communications and the latest technologies (e.g., bluetooth, wifi, wimax, sensor network). Students will be required to work on a quarter-long design project that explores how these wireless technologies can be used to design societal-scale applications and builds a proof-of-concept prototypes. The lab assignments and class projects will provide students with hands-on experience in software development and experimentations.

The students are welcome to refer to example projects from Spring'05 and and Winter'06

Goals

This undergraduate course intends to illustrate the design, management, and operational principles of telecommunication networks. Students have weekly lab assignments to reinforce the concepts and provide hands-on experience. They will also be presented with problems that require them to explore various approaches to the problem, choose between alternatives, and justify their solutions based on performance and cost/complexity considerations.

By the end of the quarter, the students will be able to use concepts learned in class to develop systematic approach to address open design problems, including scalability, complexity, and robustness issues of wireless/mobile networking systems, properties and configurations of underlying hardware components, heterogeneous channel characteristics, and emerging applications.

In addition, we also emphasize the training of students in analytic/writing and oral communication skills. Students are required to submit written projects proposals and reports. They will be asked to make an oral presentation of their projects at the end of the quarter.

Grading

Project:Students work in small groups on lab projects.

Textbook

• Jochen Schiller, Mobile Communications, 2nd edition, Pearson Education Limited, 2003 (ISBN 0-321-12381-6).

Other References

• Notes and handouts

• William Stallings, Wireless Communications & Networks, 2nd Edition, Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005 (ISBN: 0-13-191835-4).

• C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: Architecture and Protocols, Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004 (ISBN: 0-13-147023-X).

• Theodore S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition, 2002 (ISBN: 0-13-042232-0).

Acknowledgement

This class benefits from the UC Davis Computer Engineering Educational Labs (CEEL project) funded by Intel Higher Education Equipment Grant, as well as the UC Davis Teaching Resource Center's Undergraduate Instructional Improvement Program (UIIP) grant, which make it possible to purchase wireless equipments (laptops, wireless APs, PDAs, and GPS receivers) used by the students in their design projects.