* Aug 31: Please attend first class on Sep 2 (Wednesday).

Theme: The growing popularity of wireless-enabled mobile devices, such as laptop and palmtop computers, has necessitated extensive research, development, and deployment of wireless communication protocols. Communication over the wireless medium has fundamentally different properties than that over a wired medium, including higher error rates, lower bandwidths, nonuniform transmission characteristics, increased usage costs, increased susceptibility to interference and eavesdropping, and higher variability of performance. Similarly, mobile nodes behave differently and have fundamentally different limitations than stationary nodes. For example, mobile nodes generally operate on limited battery power and may move and change their point of connection to the network. This course will examine the area of mobile and wireless networking, looking at the unique challenges and opportunities presented by wireless communication and host or router mobility to design of networks, systems, and applications.

Contents: The course will commence with a short retrospective of wireless communication and initially touch on some of the fundamental physical layer properties of various wireless communication technologies. The focus will then shift to design of media access control and routing layers for various wireless systems. The course will also examine adaptations necessary at transport and higher layers to cope with node mobility and error-prone nature of the wireless medium. Finally, it will conclude with a brief overview of other related issues including emerging wireless services and wireless security.

Format: Most topics in this course will be covered through readings assigned, many of which will be technical papers. In each class I will lead a discussion on one or two papers. In order to have a discussion, students will be expected to have read one assigned paper prior to each class.

Projects: Each student in the class will be expected to do a project. In the first two classes I will discuss a number of possible projects. However, students are encouraged to define their own ideas for projects. Projects can be a system design and implementation, evaluation of an idea through simulations, or even a survey of a sub-topic. (The survey should include an evaluation component). For each project, a student should submit a written project plan, a summary at the end of the semester and an oral presentation on the project.

The projects are expected to be exploratory in nature and therefore I intend to meet with each student group involved in a project quite frequently.

This semester, many of the projects will focus on the mobile phone platform. There are 4 different platforms that are available: Android, iPhone SDK, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Take your pick and get started.

Syllabus PDF

Required text None.

Reference texts
Wireless Communications and Networks, Second Edition
by William Stallings, Prentice Hall
ISBN 0-13-191835-4.
Mobile Communications, Second Edition (Amazon link)
by Jochen Schiller, Addison Wesley
ISBN 0-321-12381-6.
Computer Networks: A Systems Approach (3rd Edition)
by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie. Morgan Kaufmann, 2003.
ISBN: 1-55860-832-X
Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet
by Jim Kurose and Keith Ross, Addison-Wesley.
ISBN: 0-201-61274-7
TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1
by W. Richard Stevens. Addison-Wesley.
ISBN: 0-201-63346-9

Read for fun
Where Wizards stay up Late
by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon. Simon and Schuster.
ISBN: 0-684-83267-4

Class Time M W F 1.00-2.15pm (on average twice a week, see below in meeting frequency)
Room PSY 103
Personnel

Class Mailing List compsci707-1-f09@lists.wisc.edu
Final Exam TBA

Assignments will be due at the start of class on the due date. Late assignments will not be accepted, so turn in whatever you have done.

Assignment #0: coming soon.

Please follow this link.

Symbian programming in Java.

The readings indicated are from the reading list.

Meeting frequency: Early in the semester the class will meet thrice a week. This will help you see some initial material relevant for course projects. However, towards the latter part of the semester we will meet only once a week, especially to give you more time to work on your projects. Averaged over the entire semester, the class will have met twice a week (total meeting time over the entire semester will be no different from other usual courses).

Reading assignments: For each class, I will assign at most one paper that you will be required to have read prior to the class. This is mandatory for each student. A part of your course grade will depend on participation in class discussions. Therefore, please make sure that you keep up with the readings.

Reading groups: To help yourself prepare for each class, you should form reading groups of 3-4 members each. The goal of the reading group would be to meet prior to class and discuss the paper assigned for the corresponding class meeting.

Contents below are incorrect and will be modified.

To be scheduled: