EEC 274, Winter 2009: Course Project

Overview

The goal of the project is to experiment with new research ideas and solutions. A list of possible research projects will be discussed in class. However, you are encouraged to come up with your own project ideas. The basic requirements for the topic of the project are that it must be networking related and original.

The attack on these problems can via design, analysis, experiments, simulations, or through a proof-of-concept prototype or implementation. While these projects are in general more open-ended than the first type, the level of difficulty of the problems will be taking into consideration in evaluating the results of the projects. Students are encouraged to propose their own problems, which may stem from their own research.

Hopefully, the problem you chose generates enough interests that you can continue to work on it as part of your M. S. or Ph. D. research project. :)

Project Proposal

Once you decide on your project, you will be asked to write a one page project proposal that should clearly state:

the problem you are solving
motivations and challenges; why is this problem important and difficult?
your proposed solution or approach and why it's new,
your plan of attack with milestones and dates, and
any resources you might need so we can take care of this early on in the semester.

I will provide feedback on the project proposals via email or in person.

Feel free to drop by office hours to discuss and develop your project ideas further.

Example proposals from EEC274, Spring 2004:

S. Gautam and G. Landge, “Characterizing Mobility and Network Usage in UC Davis Campus Wireless Network” (proposal)
L. Yuan and J. Mai, “BGP Anomaly Detection Using Wavelet Analysis” (proposal)

Project Report

At the end of the quarter, you are expected to turn in a final report and give a ten minute presentation. The final report should contain a careful survey of the previous research work related to the problem you have chosen to work on.

You should view this as a challenge to produce quality work suitable for publication in a technical workshop or conference. However, I understand that 10 weeks is a very short time to accomplish this ambitious goal. Hence, I don't expect the final report to be a polished paper, complete with results. What is important in the report is that you have illustrated your ability to formulate a problem and develop a methodology to address it.

A good report usually contains the following sections:

Abstract:
A short summary of your paper. If the reader remembers only 2 things about your paper, what should they be?
Introduction:
State the problem and goal of your work, provide a motivation (i.e., explain why this problem is important) and the challenges (how hasn't it been solved)?
Related/Previous Work:
Survey what are prior solutions have been proposed, why are they not sufficient? What are their relative strengths & weaknesses? (Should be brief for Type II report, but this is the main section for Type I report)
Proposed Approach:
Clearly state (or suggest) your approach to solve the problem, i.e., what are your contributions? any new solutions/designs you are proposing? How are they different from previous work?
Methodology:
Clearly develop a plan to evaluate your proposed solution. How do you show that your solution is better? (Type II)
Performance evaluation (Results!):
Discuss what you have found out through analysis (new theorem proofs?). Present any measurement/simulation data your have collected. Describe any proof-of-concept prototype or implementations you have built. Can you show that your proposed solution work?
Bibliography:
List of references

Example proposals from EEC274, Spring 2004:

S. Gautam and G. Landge, “Characterizing Mobility and Network Usage in UC Davis Campus Wireless Network” (report)
L. Yuan and J. Mai, “BGP Anomaly Detection Using Wavelet Analysis” (report)