CSCE 576

Mobile Computing and Applications

Spring 2018

[Announcements | General Information | Project List]

[Textbook | Schedule | Grading Scheme | Course Requirements | Academic Integrity]

Resource limitations and constraints of mobile environments bring many challenges to many traditional areas of computer science and engineering. More recently the Internet of Things (a form of mobile computing) paradigm has attracted tremendous attention from Academia and industry to enable smart interactions and change the way people interact with their surroundings in everyday tasks to live a better, safer, and more productive life. This course covers the fundamental and design principles of mobile computing systems and explores active research issues in mobile computing and ubiquitous cyber physical systems (e.g., Internet of Things). Topics to be covered include: resource management and energy consumption, ubiquitous data management, crowdsourcing, mobile sensing, context-awareness, mobility management, localization techniques, security, privacy and access control. In each topic, we will discuss a number of research papers in class and explore open research issues and scientific challenges that remain outstanding. Students will learn how to discuss and critique research contributions, use analytical thinking to formulate the research problem and propose innovative solutions. The course offers a number of term hands-on projects related to the topics on interest. Additional topics include basic emerging applications and technologies, such as power management, Bluetooth technology, and system modeling.

The learning objectives of the course are as follows:

Students should become familiar with the resource constraints and limitations of mobile environments.
Students should be familiar with the basic desing principles of mobile systems and aplications.
Students should apply their analytical thinking to critique and challange research contributions.
Students should be able to determine open research issues and propose innovative solutions to scientific challagnes.
Students should gain tremendous hands-on on real-life practical systems and emerging technologies.

Announcements

Slides and background reading are posted on Moodle, students should use their credentials to gain access.

General Information

Instructor:	Khalid Elgazzar Oliver Hall 349 (377) 482-6875 elgazzar@cacs.louisiana.edu
Schedule:	Monday/Wednesday 1:00 – 2:15pm in Oliver 113.
Prerequisites:	CSCE 513 and permission from the instructor

External Resources

There are no textbooks for this course. However, a few articles will be used from the Synthesis Lectures on Mobile and Pervasive Computing, M. Satyanarayanan Series Editor, Morgan and Claypool Publisher. Morgan & Claypool are accessible for free through a university-wide license. You should also access numerous materials and reports from the IEEE Xplore Digitial Library, and the IEEE Internet of Things Initiative web site (http://iot.ieee.org)

Additional references of cutting edge research papers can be found in the proceedings series of following relevent conferences:

ACM MobiSys
ACM Ubicomp
ACM HotMobile
IEEE PerCom
ACM SenSys

Course Schedule

The course schedule is available here including student presentations and reading assignments.

Grading Scheme

Class participation	15%
Paper presentation and discussion	15%
Weekly critiques	10%
Project execution, demo and paper	60%

Course Requirements

Students are expected to have a background in mobile computing and networking (CSCE 513 or equivalent). Knowledge of distributed systems or service-oriented computing will be beneficial.

Students will be evaluated as follows:

Classroom participation (15%):
Students are expected to read all papers covered in a week [Here is a good guide on how to read papers], come to class prepared to discuss their thoughts and take part of the classroom discussions.

Paper presentation and discussion (15%):
Each paper will be assigned to two students; one will act as a presenter and the other as a discussant. The presentation will last 15 minutes and the discussion will last 15-30 minutes. Each student should upload their slides to the course wiki before the class.

Role of presenter: As a presenter you should not simply repeat the paper's content (remember you only have 15 minutes), instead you should point out the main important findings of the work. You should highlight any novel contributions, any surprises, and other possible applications of the proposed techniques. You should check the authors' other work related to the presented paper. Finally you should place the work relative other papers covered in the course (especially the papers covered in that particular week). You should prepare a presentation for the paper and submit the presentation, via email, at least one day prior to the presentation.
Role of discussant: As a discussant, you should take an adversarial position by pointing out weak and controversial positions in the paper. You should present a short rebuttal of the paper and submit, via email, a summary of your rebuttal prior to the start of class. You should come prepared with problems and counterexamples for the presented work. Make sure you list three things you liked and disliked about the paper.

Your presentations should have

one slide that lists the main contributions of the paper.
one slide that places the paper relative to any recent work done by the authors of the paper.
one slide that links places the paper relative to other papers presented that week.
one slide that summarizes the key points from the easychair discussions about your paper (e.g., strengthens and concerns that were raised by your colleagues).
as the final slide, a listing of at least three technical points that you liked and three areas that should be improved.

Weekly critiques (10%):
For weeks 3 – 6 and 9 - 13, each student who is not assigned a role of presenter or discussant should pick one of the papers for that week and submit via email a one page critique of the paper before the start of class. The critique should offer a brief summary of the paper, points in favour, points against, and comments for improvement.

Project (60%):
One original project (10 pages IEEE format) carried out individually. The project will explore one or more of the topic areas covered in the course. Details of the project are available on the project list.

You need to submit a project proposal (2 pages IEEE format) around 1.5 months before end of term. The proposal should provide a brief motivation of the project,a detailed discussion of the data that will be used in the project, along with a timeline of milestones, and expected outcome. Make sure you have cited at least 3 papers in your proposal.

All components of this course will receive letter grades which, for purposes of calculating your course average, will be translated into numerical equivalents using School of Graduate Studies approved scale.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is constituted by the five core fundamental values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility (see www.academicintegrity.org). These values are central to the building, nurturing and sustaining of an academic community in which all members of the community will thrive. Adherence to the values expressed through academic integrity forms a foundation for the "freedom of inquiry and exchange of ideas" essential to the intellectual life of the University.

Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with the regulations concerning academic integrity and for ensuring that their assignments conform to the principles of academic integrity. Information on academic integrity is available on UL website. Departures from academic integrity include plagiarism, use of unauthorized materials, facilitation, forgery and falsification, and are antithetical to the development of an academic community at UL. Given the seriousness of these matters, actions which contravene the regulation on academic integrity carry sanctions that can range from a warning or the loss of grades on an assignment to the failure of a course to a requirement to withdraw from the university.

Copyright Statement

The material on this website is copyrighted and is for the sole use of students registered in CSCE 576. The material on this website may be downloaded for a registered student’s personal use, but shall not be distributed or disseminated to anyone other than students registered in CSCE 576.

Failure to abide by these conditions is a breach of copyright, and may also constitute a breach of academic integrity under the University Senate’s Academic Integrity Policy Statement.

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