This graduate-level class explores recent research advances in wireless networked systems. Besides offering an introduction to the research literature in this area, the instructors aim to help students cultivate taste in research: an understanding of what constitutes a good research problem, and what constitutes convincing scientific evidence that a design robustly solves a problem. The class is organized in case-study fashion: students read 15-20 recent research papers in the area of wireless networking, and critically discuss the systems described in these papers during lecture. Discussions focus on determining the merit of the research described in the papers: the practical relevance of the problem, the extent to which the experimental evaluation offered by the authors demonstrates that the proposed system solves the problem articulated, and the nuanced behavior of the proposed design, including settings in which the design succeeds and fails, as well as precise identification of which mechanisms in a design are essential to the design's success or failure, and why. Topics vary from year to year to track recent research advances. In past years, topics have included routing for fixed and mobile multi-hop wireless networks, wireless MAC and physical layers that offer increased capacity, network coding, localization, bit-rate adaptation, and wireless sensor networks.
Students are evaluated two ways. First, to help students gauge whether they are grasping the technical material in the assigned readings (and equally to ensure that students keep up with the readings during term!), a short question is assigned with each paper, the one-page answer to which must be turned in at the start of the lecture when the paper is discussed. Second, students make group presentations in the final two weeks of term, in which each group critically evaluates a research paper of its choosing.
Mobile and Adaptive Systems is open to 4th-year undergraduates (M038) and graduate students (GZ06). Enrollment is open only to students who have taken Networked Systems (3035/GZ01) or have prior equivalent experience. Despite the differing module codes, M038 and GZ06 are identical: they share the same syllabus, lectures, readings, courseworks, exam, and weighting of marks.