Project: Future Mobile/Wireless Real-Time Applications
Overview
The goal of the term project is to give you the opportunity to get your hands
dirty on a concrete problem related to real-time systems, fault-tolerant
systems, and related domains such as sensor networks, robotics, multimedia,
etc. The project will be performed individually or in teams of 2 students.
Each team/student will
prepare a project proposal in consultation with the lecturer. Further, the
teams will be responsible for frequent progress reports, demos, a term
paper, and final presentation.
Project Theme
The theme of the project is "Future Mobile and Wireless Applications". Each
student or team will investigate the status quo of mobile/wireless applications
and propose a novel application. This application can come from a variety
of scenarios, e.g., entertainment, gaming, music or video, business
applications, safety, vehicular technologies, navigational tools,
rescue missions, military applications, teaching, support for handicapped
people, tools for children, shopping, advertisement, surveillance, and many
many more. This is your opportunity to be creative! Just think of some
application you miss today or you think may be useful in the future. Think
of your own personal situation, what can you think of that would make your
life better, safer, more fun, etc. And do not constrain yourself to the
limitations of today's technologies, e.g., if your proposed application
relies on a sensor device inside a cell phone that does not exist today,
just assume we have (or build) such a cell phone.
By the end of the first half of the semester, each team/student will submit a
written and oral proposal of their application (after consultation with the
instructor). The instructor may also forward your proposals to outside
reviewers (faculty at other universities, industrial partners, etc.) to
obtain feedback on your ideas. As a second component of the proposal phase,
you will select a very concrete real-time problem that needs to be solved
to move closer to your application scenario. This problem will be addressed
during the second half of the semester. Problems can include a variety of
topics, e.g., implementation issues (developing new mobile or sensing
devices), operating system issues (scheduling of resources), communication
issues, energy management issues, middleware tools, measurements and
experiments, and many more. Again, the concrete problem will be selected
in consultation with the instructor.
To achieve your project goals, you have access to all the facilties and tools
of the DARTS Lab (356B Fitzpatrick, door code will be handed out in class).
Specifically, you will have access to numerous wireless/mobile devices such
as Linux mesh routers, sensor devices, laptops, oscilloscopes, robots,
cell phones, and other devices. Details about these devices' capabilities
will be discussed in class.
Structure of Project
The first half of the semester will serve to explore existing and potential
future wireless/mobile applications. Students will go through several
iterations of discussing their ideas with the instructor to identify a
creative novel application and a sub-problem they will focus on during the
second half of the semester.
During project execution, each student/team will meet regularly with the instructor to discuss the progress. Towards the end of the semester, students will
prepare a term paper and a presentation (and possibly a demo).
Project Proposal
The proposal is document that describes in detail the problem you are trying
to solve, the method you will apply to solve the problem, the hardware/software
artifacts involved, how you will evaluate your solution (e.g., comparing to
existing solutions), and other information such as a timeline and preliminary
related work (bibliography).
Term Paper
It is wise to start writing
toward your final document very early (e.g., write the proposal and progress
reports so that they can be reused in the final document).
While reading
papers for the lectures, have a close look at the outline and style. You will
see that the structure of these papers are very similar (abstract,
introduction, approach, implementation, evaluation, related work, summary,
future work), try to structure your reports/paper accordingly.
The term paper has to be submitted by December 18, 2007 (midnight) via email
(only postscript or PDF documents will be accepted!). Hardcopy submissions
are optional, but cannot replace a soft copy.
The paper has to be 5 pages in length or longer. The maximum font size is
11 point, the maximum spacing is 1.5. Each paper should clearly introduce the
problem, the proposed solution, the implementation details, and the evaluation.
Every student presented two papers in class, use these papers as example for style. Every paper has to have a title, the name and email addresses of the authors,
an abstract, a conclusion (and possibly future work) section, and a bibliography (at least 5 papers have to be referenced). Clearly structure the paper,
provide captions for all figures, and run a spell checker over the
document. Also, if you have a large number of figures or want to add other
documents (such as code), provide these as addendums instead of putting them
into the main document. Finally, put a copy of your code and any other
documents you want to submit into your online dropbox.