Overview

The attack on these problems can be via design, analysis, experiments, simulations, or through a proof-of-concept protoype/implementation. While these projects are in general more open-ended, 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. :)

Logistics:

1. Teams: You are encouraged to work on the projects in teams of two (max. three for large enough projects).
Feel free to use the class mailing list on SmartSite to solicit project partners.

2. Tentative Schedule:

• Apr 7-20: Explore research topics, email me if you need pointers to reference papers; Find a project partner, make an appointment with me to chat about your project ideas
• Apr 21: Project proposal due
• May 14: Progress report due
• June 4: Oral presentation
• June 8: Final report due

3. Grading: Similar to how you would "review" a technical paper, the project will be graded based on: novelty of work, solidness of technical content (accuracy, thoroughness, etc), and presentation.

Aim high and do the best you can!. You should view this as a challenge to produce quality work suitable for publication in a IEEE or ACM workshop or conference (e.g., INFOCOM, ICC, Globecom, etc).

• Project title and names of team members with email addresses
• The problem you are solving: this should identify clearly the research question you're addressing
• Motivations and challenges; why is this problem important and difficult?
• Your research methodology, i.e., 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.
• 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.

Example proposals

• summarize the main ideas in the papers, show understanding of the main contributions
• discuss the strengths of the paper & criticize their weaknesses
• explain how the works fit in the bigger picture
• Suggests/speculate viable future directions or better solutions

Example progress report

The final report should contain a careful survey of the previous research work related to the problem you have chosen to work on. You must also illustrate 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?
• 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?
• 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: