CS5263-Project-2016

Each student proposes and executes a term project alone. The eventual goal of each term project is to create a publishable workshop paper, if not better. In prior years, several students have published conference papers based on their term projects. Some of them have also used or extended their term project reports into theses.

Students are encouraged to construct real testbeds using Android phones. Android phones and other computing devices will be provided to the students.


Potential project topics, please feel free to suggest new topics:

  • 3D game streaming system for stereoscopic videos.
  • Microdrone video streaming system for senior/pet safety.
  • WebRTC based mobile streaming for Quality-of-Experience study.
  • 2D/3D mesh streaming for distributed rendering.
  • Video analytics using Spark Streaming for IoT and smartcity applications.
  • Multimedia fog computing systems.

Executions:

The main objective of the term project is to show the students how to conduct systems research in  multimedia networking. The instructor will walk you through the well-defined steps to complete the project. These steps are explained below.

  1. Literature survey: We first need to know what have been done before, more importantly, what haven’t been done in the literature. In this phase, a student searches and reads papers published in reputable journals and conferences. You are excepted to classify all existing solutions into meaningful groups, and give high-level description on representative solutions.
  2. Problem statement: After knowing what hasn’t been done, the student should formally define the research problem he/she plans to address in the term project. The student should clearly define the system models and mathematical notations.
  3. Problem solution: Each student proposes a new, better solution to address the research problem. Often, your solution is inspired by existing one studied in the literature survey; you may also borrow (algorithmic) ideas from other areas. The student should analyze the solution from the aspects of time and space complexities, and argue that the solution is (reasonably) scalable.
  4. Simulations/Experiments:A student must evaluate the proposed solution using simulations and/or experiments. Real experiments are much more convincing than simulations, because simulator often make assumptions to speed up implementation. While real experiments are highly encouraged, simulations are also useful when the test scenarios are too complex to be set up in a real testbed.

Deliverables:

In this course, students are required to turn in their reports three times. The reports must be written in Latex and this template.

In the first month, each student will pick a research topic, and write a proposal consisting of literature survey and problem statement. Each student is given 15 min to present their proposal in front of the class. If a students needs to borrow equipments (such as wireless routers and smartphones) from the instructor, he/she should explain why the equipments are needed (e.g., experimental setups) and identify the suitable make/model in the presentation.

Students are then given 1.5 month to work on their problem solutions and conduct some simulations/experiments. They add new materials to their proposal, and give a 15 min presentation to report the progress.

Next, students work on their projects for another 1.5 month, and present and (optionally) demo their term projects in the week before the final exam. We don’t have final exams, and the final technical reports are due one week after the last lecture.

In summary, each students will turn in three incremental technical reports, give three talks, and optionally demo their systems. All these deliverables will be graded (by the instructor and peers); demos are highly encouraged.

Moreover, each student will present papers relevant to his/her project topic. The presentations will also be graded. Before presenting a paper, students shall check with the instructor to make sure that the chosen paper is in the right direction, has the right scope, and is in good quality. Presenting a bad-quality paper will lead to lower marks.