Mondays & Thursdays,
Low-3130
Administrative
Information:
Instructor’s
tentative Office Hours: Tuesday 2:00-3:00 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. Please do not rely on voicemail messages (518) 276-6534. Even if you
do, send me an email as well—it is the easiest way you can reach me.
Administrative support: Ms. Melissa Reardon, JEC6049, melissa@ecserpi.edu,
(518) 276-6313.
Theme:
Understand the fundamental, non-intuitive, aspects of the performance
and design choices for emerging wireless networks, with a topical interest on
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. how long a specific
packet header is 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 (2001-2003) 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). 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.
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 any PhD student who
passed a DQE exam with math or communications as major areas. Probability (e.g.
ECSE4500) is REQUIRED. Stochastic processes, information theory and
optimization algorithms (e.g. linear programming) concepts preferred.
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 Note: this is not a course about coding, and the objective is
not to test how good you are in writing code. 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 exams, each constituting 20% of the grade. 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.
III. Project:
· A Project accounts for 30% of the grade.
And finally, the standard well known note; 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.).