Wireless technology is proliferating rapidly, and the vision of pervasive wireless computing and communications offers the promise of many societal and individual benefits. While consumer devices such as cell phones, PDAs and laptops receive a lot of attention, the impact of wireless technology is much broader, e.g., through sensor networks for safety applications and home automation, smart grid control, medical wearable and embedded wireless devices, and entertainment systems. This explosion of wireless applications creates an ever-increasing demand for more radio spectrum. However, most easily usable spectrum bands have been allocated, although many studies have shown that these bands are significantly underutilized. Cognitive Networking (CN) and Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) offer the promise of dramatically improving the performance and capacity of future wireless networks.
CN and DSA are active areas of reserach. The goal of this course is to expose students to ongoing research on the broader range of topics relevant to CN and DSA. These topics include:
The course will have two components. Lectures will be based on research papers on the above topics. Students will be responsible for summarizing and presenting some of the material. The second components will be an extensive course project that will build a complete cogntive network with DSA capabilities (in the unlicensed spectrum) on a software radio platform.
This is an advanced course in wireless networking so students must have some background in wireless networking. There are several ways of demonstrating a wireless background, including a wireless course (such as 15-496 and 18-759), work experience, or project involvement.
CN and DSA require very diverse technologies. While many of these topics are in the networking area, topics in wireless communication and policy are equally important. As a result, the course may be of interest to people with wireless communication and policy backgrounds. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the course, the course project will benefit from the involvement of students with diverse backgrounds.
The course project is an important part of the course. Students must have good programming skills and some project experience. The course project is likely to include a mix of languages, including C, verilog, and Java (but not all by the same person!).
Peter Steenkiste
Office: Wean Hall 8202
E-mail: prs@cs.cmu.edu
Office Hours: Thursday 11-12
Lectures will be held Monday and Wednesday, 10:30-11:50. Some weeks, we will also have meetings on the project on Friday, 10:30-11:50. All sessions will be in GHC 4211.
This course would normally start the third week of the semester, after the CSD IC ends. However, the instructor has unavoidable travel in the fourth and fifth week of the semester, so we will start a week early. If you are a first year PhD student in CSD and are interested in taking this course, please contact the instructor.
The table below has a tentative course schedule
| Week of | Monday - Lecture | Wednesday - Lecture | Friday - Project |
| 8/31 | - | 1. Course introduction | 2. Cognitive Networking Overview |
| 9/7 | Labor Day - no class | 3. Spectrum Policy 1 | 4. Spectrum Policy 2 |
| 9/14 | 5. TV White Spaces | No Class (travel) | - |
| 9/21 | No Class (travel) | No Class (travel) | - |
| 9/28 | 6. Cognitive radios | 7. Cognitive radios and MAC | - |
| 10/5 | 8. Using SDRs | 9. Network Coding | - |
| 10/12 | No Class | No Class | 10. Cross-layer Cooperation , quiz 1-7 |
| 10/19 | 11. Building Conflict Graphs (Eeyore) | 12. Using Conflict Graphs | 13. Using channel state |
| 10/26 | 14. MIMO review | 15. Cooperative Communication in Cellular | - |
| 11/2 | No Class | 16. Diagnosis (Kaushik) | 17. Spectrum sensing + quiz 8-15 |
| 11/9 | 18. Spectrum Coordination (Aditya) | 19. Spectrum Coordination 2 (Rui) | - |
| 11/16 | 20. Spectrum Coordination 3 | 21. XG Policy Management | - |
| 11/23 | 22. Security | Thanksgiving | Thanksgiving |
| 11/30 | Quiz 16-22, Project presentations | - | - |
The readings are available on the Reading List page.
Student must submit a list of 3-4 positive and negative points for the group of readings for each lecture by e-mail to the instructor 2 hours before class time. Positive points may include good ideas, measurements, methodology, etc. Negative points may include wrong assumptions, errors in methodology, etc. Each point should be short paragraph and may apply to a single paper or several papers.
The course project will follow the same format used in Dave Andersen's Low Power Computing course in Spring 09. The project description can be found here. A list of platforms that could be used for your project can be found here.
The table below has a tentative course schedule. All documents should use 10 point font, 2 columns, and 1 inch margins, similar to many conference submissions.
| Step | Due date | Length |
| Proposal | Monday 9/21 | 1-2 pages |
| Literature survey | Monday 10/12 | 2-3 pages + bibliography |
| Design document | Monday 10/19 | 3-4 pages |
| Status report | Friday 11/6 | 2+ pages |
| Final presentation | Wednesday 12/2 | TBD |
| Final report | Friday 12/4 | 10 pages max |