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This course will provide students with an understanding of wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks, enable them to recognise the wide range of applicability of these networks, and provide them with an understanding of the major design issues, including topics such as protocol mechanisms and resource contraints.
In this course we discuss ad hoc networks and wireless sensor networks, with focus on sensor networks. Wireless ad-hoc networks are set up dynamically, for a short time and limited purpose, and without using any fixed networking infrastructure like base stations, access points, etc. Important application areas include the provision of networking facilities to human operators in disaster areas or in areas with no infrastructure. Key design challenges include the need for self-organization and the support for mobility between the involved nodes.Wireless sensor networks are large-scale networks of relatively small nodes, called sensor nodes. Such a node consists of some sensing circuitry (humidity, pressure, light, ...), a microcontroller, some small amount of memory, a wireless transceiver and a battery. The nodes are expected to collaborate in application tasks ranging from environmental monitoring, surveillance systems, building automation and more. Sensor networks differ from "traditional" wireless networks (ad-hoc networks or wireless LANs) in many respects, including:• The nodes do not belong to individual and independent users, but are expected to collaborate closely in monitoring and controlling the physical environment.• Sensor networks can have very large numbers of nodes, up to (tens of) thousands.• The sensor nodes are severely restricted in terms of memory, processing capacity and, most important, energy. Since the nodes are cheap, mostly battery-driven and there may be thousands of them, manually replacing batteries is not an option. These resource constraints call for new approaches and architectures for the design of node software and protocol stacks.Wireless sensor networks are not only a fascinating research topic, it is expected that they also find more and more applications in the real world. The emergence of standards (and compliant commercial products) like IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee, Wireless-HART etc. is a case in point.In this course students get an introduction to the theory and practice of wireless sensor networks. The theoretical part consists of classical lectures plus own readings. A tentative list of topics covered in the lecture is:• Introduction to wireless ad-hoc and sensor networks• Network architectures• Single-node architectures• Physical layer• Medium access control (including IEEE 802.15.4), link layer issues• Routing in ad-hoc and sensor networks, topology control• End-to-End Quality-of-Service (QoS)You will additionally be given scientific papers which complement or expand on the parts covered in the lecture.In the practical part you will work on a small project involving measurements and energy-conscious protocol design and implementation of sensor network protocols on Micaz motes. The programming language used in the course is nesC, and the operating system is TinyOS (see the Resources section below). You will pick up both language and operating system from your own readings of the book, a copy of which will be provided to you at the start of the lecture.This course will give you an excellent preparation for own research work (honours projects, master or PhD theses) in this lively and exciting research area of wireless sensor networks!!!
After attending this course students: are able to understand and explain the concept of ad-hoc and sensor networks, their applications and typical node and network architectures. are able to understand and explain protocol design issues (especially energy-efficiency) and protocol designs for wireless sensor networks are able to critique protocol designs in terms of their energy-efficiency are able to design and implement sensor network protocols in the nesC/TinyOS environment. are able to set up and evaluate measurements of protocol performance in wireless sensor networks.
(COSC364 or COSC 331), ENCE260. RP: ENCE361
ENCE361
Andreas Willig
Mandatory Readings and SlidesThere is no single book or paper on which the course is based. For the practical part (nesC programming under TinyOS) the first seven chapters of Philip Levis and David Gay’s ‘TinyOS Programming’ are a required reading, to be done during the first term. It is also highly useful to check out the TinyOS website it offers a lot of reference materials, tutorials and detailed instructions. Furthermore, it offers an archive of the tinyos-help mailing list which you can search in case of problems.The papers to be read will be published in due time on the learn website.The slides of the lecture will also be published on the learn website. It is planned to publish the slides at least three days before their actual presentation, so that you have enough time to print them.Additional Readings• The lecture slides are loosely modeled after the (now slightly outdated) book: Holger Karl and Andreas Willig. Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2005.• An older survey paper on wireless sensor networks: I. F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, and E. Cayirci. Wireless Sensor Networks: a survey. Computer Networks, 38:393-422, 2002.• Urban sensing Dana Cuff, Mark Hansen, and Jerry Kang. Urban sensing: out of the woods. Communications of the ACM, 51(3), March 2008.• Some deeper texts about wireless communications and networking: Andrea Goldsmith. Wireless Communications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2005 and Andreas F. Molisch. Wireless Communications. John Wiley & Sons / IEEE Press,Chichester, UK, 2005.
There are several important documents available online about departmental regulations, policies and guidelines at the following site. We expect all students to be familiar with these.Notices about this class will be posted to the class forum in the Learn system.COSC students will also be made members of "CSSE Notices", where general notices will be posted that apply to all classes (such as information about building access or job opportunities).
ProjectThe precise project description will be published in the second week. Generally speaking, the project will open-ended and will require a modest amount of implementation, measurements, and testing.During the first term you will acquaint yourself with nesC and TinyOS. In the third week of the first term we will have a session in which:• We will jointly set up the development environment (in case you have not done this before) and have a small walk through some of the example applications.• You can ask questions about the project and discuss first ideas regarding your protocol design.The last lecture slot of the first term will again be devoted to the project, there will be room for questions and answers and you will give a brief (five minutes) interim report about your project. During the last lecture of the second term you will present your project results to your peer students. This presentation should take 15 minutes. I will also schedule with each group a separate demonstration meeting (approximately half an hour or so) in which you will demonstrate your work and give me a brief walk through the source code.The marks for the project will be based on the interim report(10%), the achieved functionality of your code and your measurements (70%), and the final presentation (20%).Final examThe final exam is closed-book and will take place in the regular exam period. It will include questions about the contents of the lecture and possibly also questions related to the project. There will be no questions related to the papers that you have to read. You are allowed to bring a dictionary between your preferred language and English. Furthermore, you are allowed to bring one hand-written sheet of paper with own notes (a “cheat sheet"). I will be strict here: more than one sheet is not allowed, and it has to be hand-written by yourself! No copies of hand-written notes of other people are allowed!ReadingsYou will be given two papers during the third term. For each paper you have to submit a short (at most one one-page) summary of the paper one week later, both by email and as a hardcopy. The summary should clearly describe the technical problem that the paper tackles, it should explain the solution approach taken, and it should contain an own critical judgement about the merits and drawbacks / limitations of the technical approach.When writing the summary, please assume that the reader is a person with some CS and networking background, but which did not yet have any exposure to WSN concepts and which (of course) has not read the paper itself { in other words, it could be a student like you before starting with COSC 418. Please write the summary such that it is useful to such a person. Please do not just throw in keywords from the paper. In addition to the papers, you have to read the first seven chapters of Philip Levis and David Gay’s ‘TinyOS Programming’ during the first term. This book covers the basics of nesC and TinyOS. You will need the contents to successfully work on the project.
The Computer Science department's grading policy states that in order to pass a course you must meet two requirements:1. You must achieve an average grade of at least 50% over all assessment items.2. You must achieve an average mark of at least 45% on invigilated assessment items.If you satisfy both these criteria, your grade will be determined by the following University- wide scale for converting marks to grades: an average mark of 50% is sufficient for a C- grade, an average mark of 55% earns a C grade, 60% earns a B- grade and so forth. However if you do not satisfy both the passing criteria you will be given either a D or E grade depending on marks. Marks are sometimes scaled to achieve consistency between courses from year to year. AegrotatsIf factors beyond your control (such as illness or family bereavement) prevent you from completing some item of course work (including laboratory sessions), or prevent you from giving your best, then you may be eligible for aegrotat, impaired performance consideration or an extension on the assessment. Details of these may be found in the University Calendar. Supporting evidence, such as a medical certificate, is normally required. If in doubt, talk to your lecturer.
Week 1 Organization, Introduction, Architectures Week 2 Node architecture, PHY Week 3 Q&A Projects, Setting up nodesWeek 4 MAC, incl. IEEE 802.15.4 Week 5 RoutingWeek 6 Q&A Projects, intermediate project reportWeek 7 Topology ControlWeek 8 E2E QoSWeek 9 final project reports, wrapup
Domestic fee $917.00
International Postgraduate fees
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
For further information see Computer Science and Software Engineering .