Multiple antennas and space
diversity:
Survey of Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) systems and analysis
of their spectral efficiency gains
A term project under this category studies in depth a class of
protocols or solutions to wireless networking problems. The main
component of this project will be a collection of simulation
experiments that capture well-motivated models for the transmission
environment and user traffic. The simulations could be done using
widely-used network simulation packages such as ns-2 or
Qualnet, or by setting up an appropriate simulation environment.
Number of students per project:
Up to 2
Deliverables:
Security of WiMAX: Study
the security of WiMAX with respect to denial of service attacks.
Use Qualnet or develop a suitable simulation environment for evaluating
key parts of
WiMAX.
Capacity of ad hoc networks: A
simulation study of the capacity of ad hoc networks exploring different
scenarios, including exploiting the mobility of nodes, and the presence
of a small number of infrastructure nodes. Can use Qualnet or
ns-2.
Event notification in sensor
networks: Study the performance of algorithms for event
notification in sensor networks. Develop suitable models for
event generation and queries, and evaluate algorithms proposed in the
literature, and their variants.
Network coding in ad hoc wireless
networks: Study network coding techniques and their effect on
the capacity of ad hoc wireless networks. Simulate recently
proposed algorithms and report on tradeoffs among delay, complexity,
and throughput.
This term project involves the development of a prototype that
demonstrates some wireless networking functionality.
Number of students per project:
Up to 3
Deliverables:
Sample
Prototype Projects
Locating a transmitter by
triangulation: Identify the location of a transmitter by using
signal strengths at multiple nearby receivers, and develop a location
service. The sensor motes available in our lab could be used for
this prototype.
Covert communication by setting up a
timing channel: Two nodes that are out of range communicate
through an access point
without authentication, by setting up a timing channel (making use of
the broadcast capability of the access point).
Routing in a Bluetooth scatternet:
Demonstrate communication across multiple piconets in a Bluetooth
scatternet.
Receiver diversity/opportunistic
MIMO: Demonstrate how signals from the same source received at
more than one receiver can be combined to recover the signal data, when
none of the individual received signals suffice.
Multi-player games: Such a
project is primarily about mobile computing applications, not about
wireless communications, per se. But it is a useful way to gain
expertise in J2ME programming and underlying wireless communication
interfaces.
MAC Analysis of 802.11 cards:
Our research lab has an oscilloscope that captures the waveforms
generated by 802.11 communication. This project will analyze a
collection of commercial Wi-Fi cards and characterize their MAC
parameters - max number of retransmissions, initial window size, and
the backoff procedure.
Multi-hop ad hoc network using 802.11:
In this project, you would set up a stand-alone multi-hope network
using 802.11 links and implement a simple ad hoc network routing
protocol for supporting a simple transport application (e.g., file
tranfer, chat).
Using multiple interfaces (Bluetooth/Wifi) to extend connectivity: Seamlessly carry out an application (e.g., file transfer, chat) by connecting using a combination of Bluetooth, WiFi, and Internet connections.
Jamming attacks on 802.11:
Implement different types of jammers using the GNU Radio/USRP platform
we have in our research lab and study their impact on 802.11 throughput
in various scenarios.