Project Types

• Implementation and basic measurements
• Analysis of traces (I can help you obtain anonymized traces of packet header information, e.g., those being collected by Professor Cleveland)
• Measurements on the PlanetLab wide-area testbed and analysis of the results (I can help you obtain an account)
• Experiments on the Emulab testbed and analysis of the results (I can help you obtain an account)
• Simulations/comparisons using ns-2, SSF, or other network simulators
• Implementation/measurements using handheld devices (if your tool can be useful to the Purdue e-stadium project, I can help you coordinate with them)
• Implementation/measurements on TabletPCs (I can help you obtain some)
• Implementation/measurements using Crossbow sensor motes (I can help you obtain some)
• Modeling and analysis
• Taxonomies and surveys

Project Topics

• Multimedia traffic measurements and characterization
• IP telephony: implementation and measurements
• Internet games: design considerations and measurements
• Application-level (overlay) multicast networks: comparisons, scalability, or "value-added" services
• Peer-to-peer system measurements
• Peer-to-peer systems: comparisons, or new services
• Peer-to-peer multimedia streaming
• Inference techniques and applications in routing and congestion control
• TCP-friendly congestion control for multimedia streaming: implementation and measurements
• Multimedia adaptation techniques, e.g., compression, forward error correction, layered congestion control, bandwidth smoothing
• Quantifying buffer requirements for multimedia
• Trust in networked multimedia applications
• Pricing for networked multimedia systems
• Resilient multimedia applications
• Multimedia servers: architectures, comparisons, workload characterization, or load balancing techniques
• Proxies: placement, caching, and resource management
• Energy-efficiency in wireless networks: adaptation techniques or service placement algorithms
• Multimedia (including sensor data) streaming in wireless networks: design and/or measurements
• Quantifying topology impact on networked multimedia systems
• Network-aware multimedia systems
• Algorithms for exploiting proximity in overlays/wireless networks
• Customization and management of an environment
• Instrumentation, data processing, and visualization tools for testbed experiments
• Topology generation and visualization tools for testbed experiments
• Scheduling and resource management algorithms: comparisons, and extensions
• Key management for secure multimedia
• Tablet PC-Based Mobile Platform for Pervasive Mixed-Reality (contact: Prof. Xu)
  [Description from Prof. Xu: This research project will lead to a new distributed middleware platform for the emerging computing concept of pervasive mixed-reality (PMR). PMR is a fast-growing concept that combines traditional areas of computer graphics, distributed multimedia, and mobile/pervasive computing. As opposed to traditional computer graphics, which generates only synthetic environments, PMR captures real-world imagery and combines it with virtual imagery. The resultant mixed-reality imagery will then be able to augment a user's real-world perception as well as his/her interaction with other users or with the environment.
  PMR has found applications in a wide range of disciplines such as architecture, civil engineering, education, forensics, and healthcare, making PMR an excellent example of "computing benefiting and transforming society". Examples of novel PMR applications include: overlaying images of behind-the-wall objects (e.g., electrical conduits, major plumbing installations) on real-time building walk-through video; superimposing internal medical imagery (e.g., X-ray data) over camera shots of human body parts; and re-constructing original crime scenes based on surveillance video and evidence from crime scene investigation (CSI).
  A key component of the PMR platform is an enabling middleware toolkit that provides the basic common mechanisms of PMR applications and their APIs. It also provides templates of typical PMR application control flows and data flows. Based on the PMR middleware toolkit, application developers will be able to develop their own PMR applications. A simple PMR application has the following configuration: a small camera is attached to the Tablet PC (wireless network enabled) capturing the environment and the Tablet PC performs camera pose estimation to determine the position and orientation of the camera relative to a chosen real-world origin. The Tablet PC processes the camera images and synthesizes mixed-reality imagery by imposing virtual imagery on the real-world imagery. The Tablet PC displays the mixed-reality view, making itself a mobile interactive "window" into a mixed-reality world. Furthermore, PMR applications involving multiple Table PCs can be developed to support context-driven pervasive collaboration.]
• ............... Any other topic we agree upon!

Each student will choose to either (i) write a survey paper on a topic of his/her choice, or (ii) conduct a measurement/implementation/simulation research project and write a short report describing it. The students who choose the research project will be more leniently graded. The students will give brief presentations on their survey papers or projects during the last few weeks of the semester. Students can choose to work alone or in teams of 2-3. I will consider the number of members of the team when grading.

The project plan is due Thursday, February 17th, 2005, in class. If you are working in a group, only one project plan is to be submitted for the entire group.

The project plan consists of the following five sections:

Topic (one sentence)
What is the main topic of your research or survey paper? See above for some suggestions. I am also open to new topics you suggest.

Motivation, Problem, Goals, and Methodology (two to ten pages)
What is the problem you will address, and what are your goals from the study?
Why do you believe your work will be interesting and unique?
What will be the main contributions of your work?
How will I know if you partially/fully succeeded?

If you are conducting a design/measurement/simulation/implementation project, describe your methodology. For example: are you designing a new system/algorithm? are you analyzing the performance of a previously developed system? are you simulating one or more algorithms? are you comparing the performance of several techniques/algorithms? are you implementing a previously described system? In all these cases, what are the metrics you plan to measure to evaluate the system/algorithm, and what parameters do you plan to vary in your experiments? What are the results you will expect?

If you are writing a survey paper, discuss the type and scope of the paper. For example: are you writing a paper that analyzes and compares several techniques/algorithms based on a set of metrics? does your paper include a summary of recent developments in a certain field? does the paper include a taxonomy (i.e., classification) of a set of techniques/algorithms?

Tentative Outline (one to two pages)
What is the expected structure (sections, subsections, and subsubsections) of your research/survey paper?

Annotated Bibliography (two to ten pages)
What are the primary papers/RFCs/Internet drafts you are planning to include in your survey, or use as a basis of your research? Include a two sentence description of what each reference contains, and why it is relevant to your project. Also mark the most important 3 references on which you will base your work.

Milestones and Deliverables (one page)
What tasks do you plan to complete? When do you expect to complete them by?
What are you planning to show/submit during the mid-semester review and at the end of the semester, in addition to your final project report (e.g., complete code, patches, data files for graphs and tables, etc)? Do you plan to give a live demo of your system?

See "Useful Links" for links to some simulation, implementation and measurements tools, and useful manuals and papers that can help with your project.

Please let me know as soon as you can if you will need an account on PlanetLab, Emulab, the XINU lab, etc, or if you need any special equipment or any software.

Also see Collected advice on research and writing for advice on writing and speaking, and some very funny articles. Also see Writing Technical Articles for more helpful hints on writing your paper/report.