EEC173B/ECS152C, Winter 2006: Labs & Design Project
[ Overview | Logistics
| Proposal | Progress Report | Project Report | Lab
Discussion Schedule ]
Overview
This course consists of
quarter-long, hands-on design projects that will be carried out in teams (3-4
students). The goal is to expose undergraduate students to technology,
research, software development, and experimentations in the space of
wireless/mobile networking. Through written proposals/reports and project
presentations, the students will also get a chance to sharpen their writing and
oral communication skills.
For Winter 2006, we will explore the
concept of opportunistic networking
through intermittent wireless connectivity through infrastructure-based
networks (e.g., IEEE 802.11-based wireless LANs or cellular networks) as well
as peer-to-peer connectivity (e.g., IEEE 802.11 ad hoc mode or between
Bluetooth enabled devices). Students will be asked to apply the basic
principles learned in class to design societal-scale applications and build a
proof-of-concept prototype. The project will require students to explore the
following basic principles of mobile computing:
- Wireless Connectivity: The mobile device should be able to detect and leverage
heterogeneous types of wireless connectivity (e.g., wireless LANs,
cellular, P2P ad hoc connections via Bluetooth) to perform the desired
data transfer.
- Accessibility: The user interface should be simple and
intuitive to allow for quick, on-the-spot information access.
- Location-awareness: In some cases, the utility of the
application programs rely heavily on the user's current location. How does
one determine or ‘infer’ the location of the user?
- Mobility: The device should be efficient in both space
and weight. Applications/programs running on top of these devices should
be energy efficient to maximize the battery life time.
Applications/protocols should deal potential disruption in
connectivity/session due to user mobility.
- Security: The device should be secure enough for users to
store personal data and the system should respect user privacy.
Please
refer to the Project Topics page for suggestions/ideas.
At the beginning of the
quarter, you will be assigned 2-3 lab projects (20% of your grade) to explore
the various building blocks/tools that you can use towards your final design
project.
Each team will create a
project proposal and make it available on the web. You should explore and
choose between various design alternatives, and justify your chosen solutions
based on performance and cost/complexity considerations. Project reports will
describe the goal of the project, the approach/methodology used, and a
discussion on the results or lessons learned. In addition to designing
technical solutions, you are encouraged to address the economical, financial,
and social impact of new wireless technologies and the applications you design,
e.g., privacy and security issues of location-aware applications. The project
will be graded based on: novelty of work, solidness of technical content
(accuracy, thoroughness, etc), and presentation.
- Week 1-4: Form
teams, brainstorm on ideas, and prepare proposals
How
you go about this depends on your situation. If you already have a clear
idea of your project, you can start writing the
proposal
(follow guidelines below), post it, and recruit other students from the
class to join your team. Or you can
brainstorm
with other students on a project idea.
- 1/27: Discuss
project ideas in lab. Make adjustments.
- 1/31: Project
proposal due (5%)
- Week 5: Literature
survey. Design and development/evaluation plan
- Week 6-7: Implement
your ideas. Get from paper to prototypes/demos
- 2/17: Progress
report during lab session
- 3/10: Presentation/demo
(10%)
- 3/15: Project report due
(20%)
You are encouraged to submit your
project proposal and report electronically. Your report should be a technical
description of your system, and should follow the guidelines below.
Once you decide on your
project, you will be asked to write a one page project proposal that
should clearly state:
- Project title and names of team members with email addresses.
Include one primary contact for the team.
- Overview of the project explaining what it is and what problem
it seeks to address.
- Motivations and challenges: why is this problem important and
difficult? Do existing systems or services do something similar, and if
so, how is yours different/better? Your "survey of the
competition" should include both relevant research projects (industry
or academic) and relevant commercial services.
- Main technical ideas/challenges. How are you going to solve the
problems you've raised and motivated in the previous paragraph? Here's
where you can present your new idea/solution and explain why it's new or
better/needed.
- Your plan of attack with milestones and dates, and
- Any resources you might need (so that we can take care of this
early on in the quarter).
I will provide feedback
on the project proposals via email or in person. Feel free to drop by office
hours to discuss your projects.
Your progress report is
essentially the literature survey and initial work you have done for your
project (eventually can go into the related work section for your final
report). You should:
- Summarize the existing solutions, show understanding of the
problem and technical challenges
- Discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of previous solutions
- Suggests/speculate viable future directions or better solutions
Any efforts in trying to
resolve outstanding issues and missing gaps are encouraged at this stage. But
remember, the content of your survey should be based on "facts", not
pure speculations!
Your report should be a
technical description of your system and should contain the following sections:
- Abstract
A short summary of your report. If the reader remembers only 2 things
about your work, what should they be?
- Introduction/Motivation
State the problem and goal of your work. Provide a motivation, i.e.,
explain why this problem is important and why it has not been solved yet?
Why and how would someone use your system? Give a specific scenario. State
your assumptions, like "Our wireless chat system will be widely
useful because we expect peer-to-peer applications will constitute 80% of
the wireless traffic within X years."
- Related/Previous Work
Survey what are prior solutions have been proposed, why are they not
sufficient? What are their relative strengths & weaknesses? How does
your system improve on these attempts?
- Design and Implementation
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? Expand on the scenario from the
motivation section. Explain any interesting design tradeoffs.
- Evaluation methodology and research results
Clearly develop a plan to evaluate your proposed solution. How do you show
that your solution is better? Discuss what you have found out through
analysis/experiments. 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.
Lab
Discussion Schedule
Subject to Change
|
Date
|
Topic
|
Comments
|
|
1/6
|
#1: Measuring Wireless Connectivity
|
Lab 1 assigned
|
|
1/13
|
#2: Location tracking; Equipment check-out
Brainstorming: Project Ideas
|
Lab 1 (Cont’d)
|
|
1/20
|
#3: Tracking end-to-end
path & performance
Refining Project Ideas
|
Lab 1 due
HW#2: Q3
|
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1/27
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#4: Java Programming on PDA
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2/3
|
Review session for Midterm
|
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2/10
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#4: Discovering P2P connectivity;
iMotes & mobility trace
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Done in class: 1/31
NO Lab session on 2/10
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2/17
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Proposal presentation
|
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2/24
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#5: Placelab tutorial
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3/3
|
TBD
|
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3/10
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Final Project Presentation, 10am-12:30pm
|
1127 Kemper
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