DIVISION OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CS 263. Wireless Communications and Sensor NetworksFall 2005
Lectures (Fall 2005): Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-4 |
Course Description |
Instructor: Prof. Matt Welsh
Office Hours: Thursdays 10-12, Maxwell Dworkin 233
Teaching Fellow: Bor-rong Chen
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 11-12pm, Maxwell Dworkin 238
This class surveys the field of wireless communications with a special focus on low-power embedded sensor networks. The course will begin with a survey of wireless communications standards and protocols, including 802.11, Bluetooth, and 802.15.4/Zigbee. Higher-level network services, such as reliable delivery, routing, naming, and security will be discussed next. Finally, the course will place significant emphasis on wireless sensor networks, including system architectures, OS and language support, distributed algorithms, and applications.
Students will read 2-3 papers a week and write short summaries of each paper. Two assignments will provide hands-on experience with wireless networking and sensor networks using the MoteLab testbed environment. Students will learn to program TinyOS, an embedded operating system for sensor nets, and will develop protocols and applications in this environment. Finally, students will undertake a significant research project, working in groups of 2-3 students. At the end of the term, students will present projects in class and prepare a written project report.
Grading will be based on a weighted combination of class participation, paper summaries, the final project presentation, and the project report.
This course is intended for graduate students at all levels as well as advanced undergraduates (CS161 or CS143 are required).
Assignment #1 posted -- Due November 8
Textbook and Readings |
Required textbook: Wireless Communications and Networking by William Stallings, 1st Ed., Prentice Hall, 2002. ISBN 0130408646. This book is available at the Harvard Co-op as well as from several online vendors. The first section of the course will be taught from this book so it is required.
All of the required paper readings in the course are linked from this page.
Assignments |
This course will involve paper readings, a couple of homework assignments, and a research project. You are expected to read the papers for each lecture, and send a short(!) summary -- 3 or 4 bullet items at the most -- of each paper to the course e-mail address before the lecture. (Send these as a single email with the current lecture date in the subject line, to cs263-reviews@eecs.)
Finally, you will undertake a significant research project during the term. The goal is to design, implement, and evaluate a real system and write a report that could eventually lead to publication. At the end of the course we will have project presentations where each group gives a short talk on their work. You may be able to combine your project with another graduate course, subject to approval by the instructors.
Syllabus and Schedule -- Click on lecture topic for slides |
Date Topic Readings Tu 9/20/05 Course Intro Th 9/22/05 RF Basics and Signal Encoding Stallings Ch. 2 (also read Appendix 2A!), Ch. 6.1-6.2 Tu 9/27/05 Antennas and spread spectrum Stallings Ch. 5, Ch. 7 Th 9/29/05 Medium Access Control Stallings Ch.9, Ch.10 Tu 10/4/05 The 802.11 Standard Stallings Ch. 14 Th 10/6/05 Bluetooth and 802.15.4 Stallings Ch. 15 Tu 10/11/05 No class Th 10/13/05 Ad-hoc Routing Protocols Review of ad hoc routing protocols, High-throughput path metric Tu 10/18/05 Special Lecture: Feng Zhao, Microsoft Research
"Programming Challenges in Sensor Networks"
Maxwell Dworkin MD G115, 3:00-4:00pm (Attendance required!)No reading Th 10/20/05 TCP/IP in 802.11 environments
NOTE: Lecture today will be held in MD-119.TCP performance over ad hoc networks, Roofnet Tu 10/25/05 Sensor Networks Operating Systems
NOTE: Lecture today will be held in MD-G 115.System Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks (note - read only Chapters 1-3 of this thesis, and avoid printing the whole thing), Emergence of Networking Abstractions in TinyOS Th 10/27/05 Sensor Network Applications
Research project proposals dueVolcanic monitoring Tu 11/1/05 Sensor Network Applications Habitat Monitoring, Industrial Sensor Networks Th 11/3/05 No class Tu 11/8/05 Sensor Network Radios
Assignment #1 DueSCALE, Taming Th 11/10/05 Power Management
(Also: Colloquium by Margaret Martonosi)A Unifying Link Abstraction, Energy efficient MAC protocol (Wei Ye et al.) Tu 11/15/05 Programming Abstractions Abstract Regions, Active sensor networks Th 11/17/05 Querying Sensor Networks TinyDB Tu 11/22/05 Storage
Project updates dueGHT, Multiresolution search and storage Th 11/24/05 Holiday - Thanksgiving Tu 11/29/05 Distributed Data Processing IDSQ: Scalable information-driven sensor querying and routing Th 12/1/05 Localization RADAR, Cricket Tu 12/6/05 Time Synchronization Flooding Time Sync Protocol Th 12/8/05 Security TinySec, Encryption overheads Tu 12/13/05 Application: Shooter Localization Countersniper System Th 12/15/05 In-class project presentations Tu 12/20/05 In-class project presentations Fr 1/6/05 Final Project Reports Due
Papers (Note: Not all papers are required reading. See the syllabus above.) |
Ad hoc networking
Sensor networks general
Sensor network applications
Sensor network operating systems
Sensor networks: communications and routing
Programming abstractions
Distributed data processing
Localization and time synchronization
Security
Other