The design project has significant flexibility, but you must decide very early what to do. Typical projects usually fall into two categories:

• a literature survey on a selected topic. Try to include the most recent literature references.
• a software simulation study. The simulation tools and platform is your choice.

You are strongly encouraged to focus your project, making it narrower and deeper rather than broader and shallower. Try to be more qualitative and analytical rather than qualitative and descriptive.  Avoid qualitative overviews of a topic.

The project msut be completed individually. To satisfy the project requirement, you are required to

• Select an appropriate topic and submit a one page abstract with an attached list of preliminary literature references no later than Thursday January 22, 2009.   You will not be graded on this, but you will get feedback if necessary to help you better define your project.
• Prepare and submit a final report no later than Thursday April 16, 2009.  Late projects will not accepted.

Your final report format should follow the style format used for submission to IEEE Communication Society Journals.  Style files are available at the following URL:  http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/index.html  LaTeX users can use the style file IEEETran.sty or IEEETran.cls.  The report should not exceed a total of 20 pages  (12pt, 26 lines per page), plus a maximum of 12 figures and tables.  

ECE6604 is a course in physical wireless communications. You must choose a project topic dealing with physical and MAC layer issues, i.e., Layers 1 and 2 in the OSI protocol stack. Topics dealing with Layer 3 and above, e.g, wireless networking protocols and architectures, mobility management, etc., are covered in the companion course ECE6610 and are NOT acceptable for ECE6604! Usually, if your project includes a model (somewhere) of the wireless channel, it will be acceptable.  If you have doubts about your project topic, please check with the instructor before proceeding.  

Plagiarism:   It is essential that you properly reference your sources for your text, figures and tables.  Cases of plagiarism, such as unreferenced verbatim copying or paraphrasing from any source, will be referred to the Dean of Students for investigation and penalties.  

The following is a list of some possible project topics.   You are free to choose your own topic as well.

• Relay channel modeling and analysis.
• Advanced fading channel simulation techniques.
• Adaptive modulation and coding technqieus
• CDMA multiuser detection techniques.
• Multicarrier techniques:  OFDM and MC-CDMA
• Receiver time/frequency/sample synchronization.
• Time domain equalization techniques.
• Frequency domain equalization techniques.
• Single antenna interference cancellation.
• Single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA)
• Space-time coding and diversity techniques.
• Spatial multiplexing techniques.
• Space division multiple access.
• Multiuser diversity technqiues.
• Bit interleaved coded modulation.
• Iterative receiver techniques.
• Automatic repeat request techniques.
• CDMA power control and soft hand-off algorithms.
• Cellular network-based radiolocation  techniques.
• Software radio sample rate conversion and/or channelization.
• Cognitive radio spectrum sensing and/or dynamic spectrum management
• A topic of your own - talk to me about it first!

You will need a good list of journal and conference publications for your project.  

• IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology
• IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication
• IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
• IEEE Transactions on Communications
• IEEE Communications Magazine
• IEEE Personal Communications Magazine
• IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing
• IEEE Communications Letters
• Proceedings of the IEE
• IEE Electronics Letters
• Kluwer Journal on Wireless Personal Communications
• Plenum International Journal of Wireless Information Networks
• IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC)
• IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM)
• IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)
• IEEE Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC)
• IEEE International Conference on Universal Personal Communications (ICUPC)
• IEEE International Conf. on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Proc. (ICASSP)
• YRP Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications

Note that all IEEE Journals and Conference records are available on-line through IEEE Explore