EE 8370 – Analog and Digital Communications
1. Underwater communication channels: understand the peculiar characteristics of underwater channel, survey and study the various channel models used for such scenarios. Simulate and compare the performance of a few of these coding and modulation methods used in these cases.
2. Optical fiber communications: Understand the peculiar nonlinear distortions introduced by an optical fiber. Study and implement the main techniques to overcome the distortions of the fiber. Compare the performance of various schemes.
3. Optical wireless communications or free space optical communications: Study the characteristics of optical wireless channel and understand methods to achieve high data rate communications over these channels.
4. Ultrawideband communications: Specific focus will be on understanding the channel model for UWB. Implement and study the performance of an UWB system based on DS-CDMA or multiband OFDM.
5. Chaotic communications: survey the main ways in which a nonlinear chaotic system is used in communications context. You will also have to simulate data transmission using one/more of these chaotic systems and compare their performance.
6. CDMA: understand the different types of CDMA – will have to implement a system with multiple users and study the performance of a various receivers and transceivers. Should also focus on a particular aspect – synchronization, channel estimation, or multiuser detection.
7. OFDM: understand the basics of an OFDM system – under what channel conditions are they typically used? What are the advantages of OFDM system? What are some of the problems to be overcome to achieve high throughputs and what techniques are used to overcome these challenges? Again, focus on one or two select challenges and implement the solutions to those.
8. Wireless fading channel models: conduct a survey of various channel models used in wireless communications. Understand the methodology used in those studies and the tradeoffs involved.
9. MIMO communications: study various techniques used to exploit availability of multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver. What are the advantages of each of those methods? Implement a simple multiple antenna transmission and reception scheme.
In all of the topics, remember to focus on physical layer aspects of the problem.
For in class students, you should work in groups of 2 and no more than one group will be assigned to each project. So as soon as you decide on your project, send me an email with the title and I will post your name next to the title on the website to indicate that the topic has been taken.
For video students, you are welcome to choose any of the topics above, even if it is already being worked on by a group of in class students.
Both in class and video students are welcome to choose a topic that is not on the list. Please discuss the scope of new projects that you might be interested in with me.
Typically, I expect each group to read at least 5-10 relevant papers on the topic during the course of the entire project. In some of the topics given there are many hundreds of papers – I want you to use good judgment in selecting appropriate papers that had a big impact on that area. One possible metric to determine impact of a paper is to see how many people have cited it. Most of the IEEE journal papers can be downloaded from IEEE Explore a link for which is available on smu library website. You can also check the author websites and google for papers. SMU library also has access to all ACM journals and many other relevant journals. By the time you submit your project proposal, you need to have completed a survey and identified relevant papers for your project.
On each of the projects, you are expected to learn something beyond what is covered in the classroom. Feel free to come and talk to me at any point if you are feeling overwhelmed or unsure of how to proceed.
Be especially careful about correctly citing other people’s work. If you use MATLAB code from someone else – you have to make sure that you have the permission to do so and also cite the source of the code when you submit your report.
Deadlines
Project proposal February 25th 2009 10% of total grade
Final Project report May 6th 2009, 5:00pm for in class students 20% of total grade
Along with the final report you should also send me your MATLAB files that you used to generate the simulation results along with precise instructions on how to run and generate the plots. Make sure the MATAB files are well commented. I will invite each of the in class project groups to my office to find out your understanding of your project topic and use this evaluation as part of your final project report.
MATLAB is available on all ENGR machines at SMU; let me know if you are having trouble in accessing MATLAB.
The project proposal should include the results of your preliminary survey and plan for semester. (3 pages maximum; 10 point font, 2 column format, 1 inch margins)
Here are some tips for writing project proposals and project report