Guidelines for research project on EEC 693/793- Emerging techniques for
wireless communications and networking
Objective: The main objective is to utilize the concepts learnt in class for understanding
seminal papers in wireless communication systems, present the methods/ideas of those
papers by writing your own simulation code, and propose your novel idea.
Selecting a project:
A group of 2-3 (strictly followed) students can submit a project title and its short
description (not more than a page). The project should be related to wireless and
networking areas and the topic should not be too old unless there is a novel idea. For
example, projects related with OFDM, MIMO, etc., are fine, but a project such as
Simulation of Amplitude Modulation is not an appropriate project. The project should be
chosen in such a way that it can be completed in a period of 2 months. Therefore, big
projects that require experiments and hardware implementation are not suggested. Most
of the projects are based on some well-known research papers. You should be able to
present the ideas/concepts of those papers using your own simulation code. You are
encouraged to come up with your methods/algorithms so that your work can be
submitted for a potential publication.
Steps of the project:
1) Literature survey
2) Submitting your project title with a short description (deadline -10 Oct.). Please
also include copies of key reference papers for your project and specify the
programming language you will use for simulations.
3) Your proposal will be either accepted or you will be advised to do another feasible
project by Oct 17. Please see below for some possible project topics.
4) Midterm progress presentation on 7 Nov. Each group will get 12 mins for
presentation.
5) Submission of final project report (not longer than 10 letter size pages). Attach
also copies of your simulation code. – (deadline is Dec. 7).
6) Oral exam in which you will be asked questions on your project report and
simulation code -Dec. 9. (starts at 10 a.m.), FH 335
Minimum requirement for a successful project:
The minimum requirement is that you should thoroughly understand your key reference
paper, be clear about the objective of your project, and able to explain you achievement.
Your own simulation code is the most important part of the project. During oral exam,
you will be mainly asked questions from your code. Note that it is difficult to pass the
project without writing your own simulation program.
Important Suggestion:
If you have questions on your project or if you are stuck in your simulation code, let me
know as soon as possible. I am always ready to help you if you have a specific question.
But please do not wait until the project submission deadline.
Project Grading:
1) Project proposal – 10%
2) Midterm progress presentation -20%
3) Final report- 50% (20% for report and 30% for simulation code)
4) Oral exam – 20%
Example Project Topics:
1) Comparison of spectrum sensing techniques in cognitive radio:
The objective is to compare some of the key existing spectrum sensing techniques in
terms of complexity and tradeoff. MATLAB/C simulation results are required in final
project report.
Key papers:
[A] E. Axell, G. Leus, E. G. Larsson, H. V. Poor, ``Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive
Radio : State-of-the-Art and Recent Advances”, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol.
29, no. 3, 2012.
[B] T. Yucek and H. Arslan, ``A Survey of Spectrum Sensing Algorithms for Cognitive
Radio Applications,'' IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 11, no. 1, first
quarter 2009.
2) Massive MIMO communications: Theory and Challenges:
The objective is to show the capacity gain of massive MIMO over existing MIMO. The
challenges for the implementation of massive MIMO have to be discussed in the project.
Simulation results are required.
Key paper:
[A] J. Hoydis, S. Brink, and M. Debbah,``Massive MIMO in the UL/DL of Cellular
Networks: How Many Antennas Do We Need? '' IEEE Journal of Sel. Areas on
Communications, vol. 31, no. 2, Feb. 2013.
3) Full-duplex Communications:
The idea is to enable a wireless device at the same time and frequency. The challenge is
to reduce loop interference. The objective is to study the existing works and simulate
them.
Key paper:
[A] J. Choi, M. Jain , K. Srinivasan, P. Levis, and S Katti, ``Achieving Single Channel
Full duplex wireless communications, available with google search.
4) Cooperative Communications:
This is not a very new topic, but it is a good topic for student project. The idea is to use
one or multiple relays to transmit signals from source to destination. Various relay
protocols and their capacities can be compared.
Key papers:
[A] Nosratinia, T. E. Hunter, and A. Hedayat, ``Cooperative communications in wireless
networks,’’ IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 74-80, Oct. 2004.
[B] J. N. Laneman, D. N. C. Tse, and G. W. Wornell, ``Cooperative diversity in wireless
networks: Efficient protocols and outage behavior'', IEEE Trans. Information Theory,
vo. 15, no. 12, Dec. 2004.
5) Analyzing diversity multiplexing tradeoff in MIMO systems
MIMO provides diversity gain (low bit error or outage probability) and supports high
data rate transmission, but both may not be achieved simultaneously in general. The
project's objective is to compare various techniques and their performance in terms of
diversity multiplexing tradeoff. Project report should contain simulation results.
Key paper:
[A] L. Zheng and D. N. C. Tse, ``Diversity and Multiplexing: A fundamental tradeoff in
multiple-antenna channels,’’ IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 49, no. 5,
pp. 1073-1096, May 2003.