(Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks)
Mondays & Thursdays,
4:00-5:50
SAGE 3101
Detailed
Course Schedule: http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/homepages/abouzeid/6962-03/Class-Schedule.html
(LAST UPDATED: 11/13/2003.)
Administrative
Information:
Instructor’s
tentative Office Hours: Wednesday 11:00 am -12:30 pm or by appointment. When my
office hours need to be rescheduled, it will be posted online and on office
door; whenever possible, I will announce the change in class the week before.
Instructor’s
Contact Information: abouzeid@ecse.rpi.edu,
JEC6038, Tel (518) 276-6534. Please do not rely on voicemail messages. Even if
you do leave a voicemail message, please send me an email as well—e-mail is the
easiest and fastest way you can reach me.
TA: Fengji Ye.
Email: yef@rpi.edu. Office hours Wednesday
4:30-5:30 pm at JEC 6203.
Administrative support: Ms. Melissa Reardon, JEC6049, melissa@ecserpi.edu,
(518) 276-6313.
Theme:
Application of mathematical techniques to understand the fundamental,
non-intuitive, aspects of the performance and design choices for emerging
wireless networks, with a topical interest in mobile ad-hoc networks and
large-scale sensor networks. We will focus on Medium Access Control,
Routing and data aggregation and Transport layer design.
Not focus of this
course: Examples of issues that could be of importance but are not
covered in this course are the detailed systems issues (e.g. the length
of a specific packet header in a specific protocol implementation), physical
layer design (modulation and demodulation schemes, equalization, coding, etc.),
application layer development (e.g. Java, sockets), … etc. [1]
Course Dynamics/Format:
There is no textbook. We will focus on recent papers from conferences
(e.g. MobiCom, MobiHoc, Infocom, etc.) and journals (IEEE/ACM Transactions on
Networking, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Wireless Networks, etc.).
You will sometimes need to learn some background material from a
suggested chapter in a text-book, depending on the paper we will be covering. I
will mention this as needed.
We will cover approximately 20 papers (around 1 paper a week). This
allows some time for covering some background material and some necessary
system-level issues.
The syllabus can be classified to three parts; Medium Access Control,
Routing and Transport. The background to understand the details of each paper
will be mentioned in-class. Sometimes I will give a short overview for advanced
techniques, as needed.
There will be a simulation or mathematical assignment (or both) every
approximately two weeks, two mid-terms and an in-class final exam.
Pre-requisites:
Mathematical maturity is expected, as is typical of a graduate student in EE, CE or CS. Probability (e.g. ECSE4500) is a minimum requirement. Stochastic processes, information theory and optimization algorithms (e.g. linear programming) concepts preferred. Reasonable programming skills (e.g. C or C++) are expected for some of the assignments. Exceptional undergraduate students interested in this course are encouraged to discuss with the instructor first to make sure they have the proper background and pre-requisites (see instructor’s contact information above).
Note: You will
probably not have the necessary background for each and every research paper
that we will cover in this course. However, you should have, on the average,
the minimal background needed to learn the material, as mentioned above,
and the eagerness to learn new mathematical skills. I’ll give an example. Some
of the papers we will study deal with algorithm complexity analysis. Others
deal with stochastic processes. And finally, we may need to simulate some
complex systems that we cannot model mathematically. Some of the material
should be trivially easy for you, and a few others being totally new concepts.
At the end, you will hopefully learn and appreciate the variety of tools and
techniques and how they are applied to solve some of the challenging problems
in this field. That will also entice you to do the same in your career.
Student
Responsibilities:
I. Assignments constitute 30% of the grade. They will be of two types:
·
Mathematical in
nature. These constitute the majority of the assignments. For example, we will
study in class certain mathematical models, and an assignment may introduce an
alternative model or a small change in the studied model, then ask you to solve
it. Mathematical maturity is expected.
·
Some
simulation based assignments (most of the code will be provided, and the
student is expected to design the experiments in order to address the specific
problem. Notice that this is not a course about software programming, and the
objective is not to test how good you are in writing programs. However,
programming literacy is expected.
·
Assignments
and their due dates will be posted on the class web-page (listed in the header
above). Assignment solutions will be also posted after the due date.
·
You are encouraged to discuss (but not copy the
solutions of) assignments.
·
Late
assignments will not be accepted.
II. Exams:
· Two in-class mid-term exam, each constituting 20% of the grade. One of these exams might be replaced by a project. This will be decided later in the course.
· Final exam, in-class, accounts for 30% of the grade. If you have conflict with the final exam you need to email me at least 4 weeks before the exam date wherever possible. Signed official documents supporting the reason for rescheduling need to be submitted to me.
· Exams will rely on material covered in-class. An example practice mid-term will be posted so that you would know what to expect.
· The dates of the exams will be posted on the class web-page. The final exam date is schedule by the registrar.
· You are required to work alone on in-class exams.
· Any incident of academic dishonesty (e.g. copying assignment solutions from others, cheating during in-class exams, etc.) will severely penalized, to the extent of an F in the class. The determination of the severity is at the discretion of the instructor. Please refer to Rensselaer Handbook of Student Rights and Responsibilities if you really want to get more details on this. If in doubt, please ask the instructor.
============
[1]
You may want to consult the course
catalog for courses that do cover those issues (e.g. Experimental Networking,
Network Programming, Digital Communication, etc.).