Projects

Structuring your Project Proposals:

  • Your project proposal is due on Sept 8. It should explicitly include:
    • The goal of your project (a precise statement of what is it that you are studying/designing, as well as the deliverable that can be expected from your project).
    • The methodology you will be adopting (includes both experimental and analysis methodology)
      • Experimental methodology: how will you conduct experiments, what metrics will you collect, how will you measure/estimate the metrics, what parameters will you vary, etc
      • Analysis methodology: how will you analyze your data? What specific questions will you answer (and how)?
    • Your hypothesis:  what do you expect your main results to be?
    • A 2-weekly milestone timeline for your project progress (roughly, Sept 22, Oct 6, Oct 20, Nov 3, Nov 17, Dec 1).
      • You have about 10-12 weeks to complete your project + report. Please be wise about your plan, making sure you make sufficient progress in the first few weeks.
      • I am planning an in-class “mid-project progress presentation” around Oct 27 — your Oct 20 milestone should hope to complete significant portions (about half-way) of the project in preparation for this presentation.
  • Your proposal need not be any longer than 1 page (2 pages if you’re in a group of 2).

Suggestions for types of projects:

  • Write a relevant mobile phone app that has a reasonable communications component, and evaluate the component – you can use existing apps to tap into one of the sensors on your mobile phone, and build an app around it.
  • Studying/characterizing the performance of a wireless network deployment (e.g., a community network, wifi hot-spots around town, wifi access points in a building).
  • Wireless trace analysis (usage patterns, contention patterns, performance patterns — delays, losses).
  • Simulation-based experimental evaluation of protocols in the NS-2 simulator (MAC protocols, ad-hoc routing protocols).
  • Extending the design or formal analysis of a previously-proposed protocol (e.g., from one of the papers selected for in-class discussion).
  • Modifying wireless device drivers to experimentally evaluate enhancements at the MAC layer.

Here are some specific project topics that were pursued in past course offerings:

  • Indoor localization using LoRa
  • Clustering analysis of mobile web traffic
  • Designing a “wireless mouse” app for a smartphone
  • Analyzing wireless traces to see if apps can be identified from network traffic
  • Recreating attacks on wireless transmissions
  • Enhancing Transport Over Wireless Links with TCP Rapid
  • Coping With High Bandwidth Demand in Cellular Networks (Survey)
  • A Study of Channel Capture Effect in 802.11
  • Designing Auction-based Mechanisms for Wireless Channel Redistribution
  • Modeling Signal Attenuation and Localization
  • Efficient Node Placement in an Ad-hoc Network
  • Wireless Trace Analysis to Study Access Patterns
  • Simulation-based Evaluation of Ad-hoc Routing Protocols
  • Analysis of Traces from a Wireless Mesh Network
  • Characterization of Link Quality in an OpenMesh Network
  • Sensor Network Dynamic Media Access Control Based on State Uncertainties
  • Experimental Evaluation of Bandwidth Estimation on Wireless Links