University of Florida, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

EEL 6509 -- Wireless Communications

Class Project Guidelines

General Objectives:

The project is intended to provide the students with an opportunity to take the initiative and develop independent research capability and creativity.  In the project, students are expected to identify problems of their own interest, tackle the problems from their own perspective, gain hand-on experience, and hopefully, have the fun of making their own discoveries.   The project will obviously require a good deal of time and energy, imagination and hard work.

Project Format:

The class project will be done individually (that is, teaming with other students is not allowed), requiring about 30 hours over the entire semester.  A project includes the following phases: choosing a project topic, writing a project proposal, conducting the project, and writing a final project report.

A project usually consists of reading papers on a chosen topic, comparing performances of different approaches, and perhaps proposing your own algorithms/improvements, implementing one or two of them. 

• Your proposal is to describe the problems you want to explore, list references you have read, and specify your research objectives and how to achieve these objectives.    Before you submit the proposal, you can discuss with me about the possible topics, either during my office hours or through email.
• Proposals are limited to 2 pages.
• Proposals must include the following parts:
  • Project title and your name
  • Abstract - A paragraph that briefly describes the research problems and what you plan to achieve.
  • Project plan - It should list tasks that you plan to carry out.  For each task, describe how you plan to approach it, and the deadline for completing it.  In addition to the reading/programming work you plan to do, you should also budget your time for searching the project subject, initial literature search, preparing the final report and presentation.
  • Reference list - List the references that you have read and are relevant to your project topic.  The references could be papers, documents, and web links.  Please include complete citation of each reference: author, title of the article, journal or book name, and the URL if appropriate.
• Submit your proposal (in Word or PDF format) to the E-learning web site before the deadline.    

• The length of a report must be no more than 10 pages.
• Reports must follow the official IEEE publication format. Use the Word or Latex templates provided by IEEE.

  Specifically, you can find

  • Word template
    Click here.

• Reports must include the following parts:
  • Project title and your name
  • Abstract - A paragraph that summarizes the problem and the results.
  • Introduction - Sets the context, describes the problem, and describes your solution.
  • Description - One or more sections that describes the problem and your approach to the solution in detail.
  • Evaluation - A section that quantitatively evaluates your ideas.
  • Related work - Describes representative works related to your work, and summarizes the pros and cons of each work.
  • Summary and Conclusions - Summarize what you did and what interesting things you learned from the project.
  • Reference list
• You also need to submit your computer programs that you develop for your project.
• In addition, you need to prepare a Powerpoint file, which must include the following parts (there is no page limit for the Powerpoint file):
  • The problem under study
  • Existing approaches
  • (Optional) Proposed new approach if there is any
  • Performance evaluation of existing approaches and (if any) the proposed new approach
  • Conclusion

• You need to submit the following items to the E-learning website under the directory of "Project Report".
  • Project report
  • Computer programs that you develop for your project.   The programs can be in the format of Matlab script or C Language.
  • Powerpoint file
  • (Optional) post a video on YouTube, which demonstrates your project results.  Your YouTube video is expected to have a length of at least 10 minutes; the content of your video is expected to include a presentation of your Powerpoint slides and a demonstration of your computer programs. You can provide your YouTube video link in the text box under the directory of "Project Report" on the E-learning website.  If you submit your YouTube video link, you will receive a bonus, which moves up your final grade by one level, i.e., from D to C, or from C to B, or from B to A.  But if your final grade is E (failure), you will not get an upgrade due to submitting your YouTube video link.   
  • You can download the following free (open source) program to record video with screen capture: http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html?gclid=CNadwsW6-6wCFSVjTAodbjzTSg

Hints for Coming Up with a Topic

Please feel free to propose any idea you want for your project.

There are two basic approaches you can use for your project.

• Develop a new idea or a new twist on an existing idea, and then do enough evaluation to serve as a proof of concept.
• Do an extensive evaluation of an existing idea that gives you some insight into the advantages or disadvantages of that idea.

Here are some suggested project topics.