Instructor: Professor Joseph Camp
Email: "camp" AT "smu.edu"
Phone: 214-768-8541 Fax: 214-768-3573
Office location: 340 Junkins Building, SMU campus
Office hours: Mon./Wed. 9-10:30am or by appointment

Time/Place: 12:30-1:50 Monday and Wednesday, SIC 308

Course Description: Introduction to design and analysis of communication networks with a focus on wireless networks and performance evaluation. Topics include media access, routing, traffic modeling, congestion control, and scheduling.

Background: The topics that we will cover are self-contained so that a background in networking is not required. EE 3360 (Statistical Methods in EE) or similar is a required prerequisite.

Assignments

Grading

40% homework assignments (5)
45% exams (2)
15% presentation, paper reviews, and class participation

You may discuss homework assignments with classmates but all solutions must be original and individually prepared. Late homework work will be penalized at 15% of its full credit per day up to a maximum of 4 days, after which no late work will be accepted.

Both exams are take-home exams and must be completed independently. The SMU Honor Code will be strictly enforced.

There will be three papers that are read outside of class (see Assignments). On each paper, all students are required to submit one paragraph summarizing the paper and one paragraph analyzing the work. Guides for how to read papers can be found here and here. Each paper will be assigned 2 presenters who will each prepare a 15-minute talk. The first presenter will highlight the strengths of the work, summarizing the main contributions, including a problem statement, overview of key results, and differentiation from prior work. The second presenter will assess the shortcomings of the work, room for future work, and/or work that has been done since the paper was written. Each presentation should draw upon a critical analysis of the paper, i.e., your assessment of the strength of the contribution, the work's current or potential impact, your assessment of the evaluation methodology, etc. Presenters turn in their slides in place of the one-page summary.

Required Textbook: A. Kumar, D. Manjunath, and J. Kuri, Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach. Elsevier, 2004.

Topics

Medium access in wireless networks including IEEE 802.11
Scheduling and fairness including max-min-fair and maximal scheduling
Congestion control including network utility maximization and TCP
Modulation Rate Adaptation
Routing including Dijkstra and Bellman-Ford algorithms