CS/ECE 439: Wireless Networks Fall 2024

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Syllabus

Overview of wireless network architectures including cellular networks, local area networks, multi-hop wireless networks such as ad hoc networks, mesh networks, and sensor networks; capacity of wireless networks; medium access control, routing protocols, and transport protocols for wireless networks; mechanisms to improve performance and security in wireless networks; energy-efficient protocols for sensor networks.

Staff

 

Instructor	Prof. Robin Kravets, rhk@illinois.edu SC 3114 Office Hours: By Appointment

 

Slack

Grades

• Class participation – 15%
  • You only get out of this class what you put into it!
  • Attendance and participation is required during all student presentations
• Class HW (2) - 5%
• Presentation of advanced topics – 20%
  • In class team presentation (20-30 min)
  • Critical thinking about exciting current technology and research
  • Comparison of proposed solutions
  • Applicability and limitations
• Project: team-based, hands-on – 45%
  • More in-depth study of a particular topic
  • Topic is flexible
  • Organized in multiple phases
• Project Presentation - 10%
• Project Evaluations - 5%
  • Evaluation of another team's class project presentation

Class Presentation

You will be preparing a presentation of particular topic in the area of wireless networking most likely related to your class project. 

What is a good topic?

The goal of a presentation is to give a broad, structured overview of a specific area to the class. Although it may sound irrelevant to you, here are two example scenarios in which you may have to prepare a presentation after you graduate:

• You are working for a company that is exploring a new wireless technology or market, so employees and management are very not very familiar with this new area. You could be asked to prepare a 30 minute presentation to introduce to area, highlighting different approaches, challenges, opportunities, and risks.
• You decided to go to graduate school and you are writing your first paper on a research project you just finished. You need to write a short related work section that includes a survey of existing work in the areas relevant to your research.

A survey is different from a set of paper summaries. The survey should focus on presenting the “big picture” using the papers as examples. Examples may be papers cited in the original papers, material found on the web, or results from online libraries, like IEEE Explorer, or the ACM portal. Besides giving you experience in preparing a survey, this assignment should also help you sharpen your critical thinking skills. You should not blindly accept all statements you read simply because they appear in print in a refereed publication. While the material will generally be technically correct, parts of the papers may be biased or may ignore relevant related work (typically by accident), or the claims may overstate the results that are presented. These problems most often show up in the evaluation section of the papers. The evaluation is sometimes flawed (e.g. uses inaccurate simulators, ignores certain sources of overhead, or presents graphs in misleading ways) or may be very limited in scope (e.g. collects results on one testbed that may not be typical, but then makes very broad claims). Your assessment of the accuracy of the results should be reflected in the survey, i.e. the survey must present your perspective on the state of the art in the area.

You can consult pretty much any material as long as you cite the source. However, you cannot copy text from other papers or the web, since that is plagiarism. The only exception is that you can quote short excerpts or figures from other material, assuming you make it clear that it is a quote and you cite the source.

Deliverables

Each team should prepare a 20-30 min presentation. We will allocate enough time for each presentation, leaving time for questions during and after each presentation. Please e-mail your team information and preferred topics. A doodle pool will be posted shortly to select presentation days. As part of your final project you report, you will be including a written survey of this topic. 

Milestones

September 30th

• Submit team information and proposed topic

At least 7 days before your presentation:

• Submit draft slides for feedback - Earlier is always better
• Meet with me at least a week before your presentation to go over your slides. Most teams meet with me multiple times This is a mandatory meeting.

Class Project

The goal of the course project is to provide depth in a particular area of wireless networking in a hands-on fashion.

Here are some things to consider when defining your project:

• The project needs to result in a concrete outcome. Ultimately, the primary goal is that you learn something.
• You should have the necessary background to complete the project. For example, do not attempt a project at the physical layer if your only background in this area is just the few lectures in this course. Similarly, do not attempt a project that involves kernel or driver hacking if you have limited rogramming experience.
• The project needs to be feasible. For example, the amount of effort must be reasonable given the time available and you must have access to the infrastructure needed to execute the project.
• Build a team with diverse skills to cover theorhetical and practical topics.
• I have some equipment to borrow.

Deliverables

The specific deliverables for the project include a proposal, two check points and a final presentation. All documents should be in PDF format and should be placed in your class google drive folder. All meetings are mandatory.

Team

Submit the names of 2-person team members and a topic for dicsussion during the initial project meetings. 3-person teams upon approval from the professor. Due September 9th.

Note: there are students taking this class for 3 and 4 credits. Please try to keep teams with the same credit requirements.

Initial Project Meeting

During this meeting, we will discuss your project ideas. Remeber this is a semester-long project, so think about what you can get done during that time.

Project Proposal

Project design documents will typically be about two-three pages in length, including appropriate figures. Give a brief description of the problem you intend to work on. However, the more information you give, the more feedback you will get. The project design should include the following information. Remember, the projects scope and size should scale with the number of team members.

• Due September 22rd
• Names of team members
• Project topic and title
• Description of activities that will be performed as part of the project
• Expected results
• Include at least five related papers with standard bibliographic references
• Equipment and resources needed
• Project plan
  • Rough list of mile stones, responsibilities of team members, qualifications.

Project Checkpoint 1 – Extended Project Proposal

• Due October 13th
• Project meetings scheduled the week of October 17th.
• Team information
• Approximately five pages, normal font, normal margins.
  • Progress so far: what was completed
  • Any results so far
  • Problems encountered
  • Changes in the project plan
• Build on the description of your project from the initial proposal.
• Focus on challenges and your approach.
• Explain why your problem is interesting and mention how people have been addressing the problem in the past.
• If possible, explain the limitations of current approaches.
• Describe how you plan to tackle the problem (i.e., through simulation, emulation and/or implementation) and how you plan to evaluate your solution (i.e., what metrics will you use to evaluate performance?). 

Checkpoint 2 – Status Report

• Due November 10th.
• The status report should build on your extended proposal.
• Indicate any changes to your approach to your research project.
• Include implementation details and initial results.
• Mandatory projects meetings with course staff (may be scheduled over a few weeks to accomodate all teams)

Final Project

• Due December 10th
• 12-15 pages for 2-member teams, 17-20 page for 3-member teams
  • Normal fonts (10 point)
  • Normal margins (an inch each side)
  • Normal sized figures.
  • Limited unused whited space
  • I will take points off if there is not enough material (i.e., too short).
  • And most important of all SPELLCHECK you document. If I find spelling mistakes that a spell checker would have found, I will take points off. Same for poorly organized/written references.
• To bring it all together, you want to be able to answer the following questions (this is by no means a comprehensive list):
  • What is the problem?
  • Why is this problem important?
  • How are you going to solve/evaluate this problem?
  • What is different from other people's work?
  • What are your contributions?
• Content (Page counts are just estimates and are probably low)
  • Abstract: (1/4 page)
  • Intro: (1 page)
    • Quick explanation of problem, your solution (basically why, what, how).
    • Why this is an interesting problem and a high level overview of your contribution.
  • Motivation and background: (2 - 3 pages)
    • Highlight the challenges in solving this problem.
    • Formalize the problem space, analytically or via the mechanisms
    • Present your approach in the light of other people's work
    • Explain why your solution is better, more robust, etc
    • Extensive related work showing that you have considered the current research in the area.
  • Approach: (1 - 2 pages)
    • A detailed description of what you did and why you made particular choices.
    • This is best if it parallels the discussion and formalization in the previous section.
  • Evaluation/Implementation: (3 - 4 pages)
    • How do you evaluate your solution.
    • Explain the metrics that you chose for the evaluation and why you chose them.
    • Explain your results, both positive and negative.
  • Conclusions and future directions: (1/2 page)
    • Explain what your learned.
    • Point to future research directions to extend this research/project

 Project Presentation

• Last week of the semester and/or during our final time slot
• Either a class presentation or a poster depending on the number of projects in the class.

4 Credit Project

Students taking this class for 4 credits have two options. Please discuss with the professor and inform them of your choice.

• If all team members are taking the class for 4 credits, the project can be increased in scope. This must be approved by the professor during team meetings.
• Otherwise, students can submit a 10-page survey paper on an approved topic due the last day of class.