2007 Research Projects

Project	Description	Prerequisites
Hardware Projects
Cognitive Radio	Advanced communication system design with Xilinx ISE and Core Generator	Software: VHDL, Xilinx ISE Hardware: Xilinx FPGA
Embedded Processor System Design	Embedded processor system design with Xilinx soft microprocessor – MicroBlaze	Software: VHDL, Xilinx ISE Hardware: Xilinx FPGA
Software Projects
ZigBee Radio Testbed	Develop a sensor network testbed by integrating ZigBee (Telos) motes onto Orbit testbed and extending existing experimental infrastructure.	Software: Linux, C/C++, Java
Software Radio	Develop a distributed SDR framework based on USRP and GNU radio software and integrate it with Orbit testbed	Software: Linux, C/C++, Python
802.11 Monitoring	802.11 monitoring and distributed packet capture/analysis	Software: XML, DHTML, SQL , Java
Robotic Mobility	Robotic platform implementation of various ORBIT related mobility models	Software: Linux, C, XML, Java

Cognitive Radio Design with Xilinx Integrated Software Environment and Xilinx Core Generator

This project will take students through the process of designing a prototype hardware system on a Xilinx FPGA Development Board. Field Programmable Gate Array, or FPGA is a programmable logic device consisting of thousands to tens of thousands of gates and can be used to prototype Integrated Circuit designs for a variety of applications, be it networking, data, imaging or voice. These project will make use of the Xilinx FPGA Design Platform and will involve the implementation of some of the blocks provided by the Xilinx Core Library, such as the Digital Synthesizer, Numerically Controlled Oscillator or Digital Down Converter along with other hardware modules that are required to build a complete working system. Xilinx ISE software will be used to implement the steps in the hardware design flow – starting from design specification, design synthesis, implementation to programming the end Xilinx FPGA device. The system will be verified by performing behavioral, structural and timing simulations using Logic Simulators and finally on-board testing will be carried out to validate the design.

Embedded Processor System Design With Xilinx Soft Microprocessor – MicroBlaze

This project will involve the use of the Embedded Processor Development Kit provided by Xilinx, particularly the implementation and application of its 32-bit soft microprocessor, MicroBlaze. MicroBlaze, an embedded soft core, is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC), optimized for implementation in a Xilinx FPGA. The hardware components of the system consist of MicroBlaze soft core along with other hardware blocks defined by the user and implemented on the target FPGA. The software components of the system consist of the software platform created by Xilinx tools along with application software written by the user.

ZigBee Radio Testbed

Sensor networks are a relatively young research area. Many protocols from different levels of the network stack have been proposed recently, but their utilities are yet to be validated using actual platforms, mainly due to the absence an easy-to-use experimental methodology. For example, even if a researcher possesses a reasonable number of motes (standard sensor platform), the mere workload of uploading the program to each mote is unbearable. Therefore, conducting sensor network experiments will become less challenging if an open-access testbed is available. The objective of this project is to build such a testbed, involving the students integrating ZigBee motes to the existing Orbit testbed, and developing a standard experimental infrastructure. Such an infrastructure should include an application development component, an application installation component, and an application-profiling component. In addition to delivering an experimental testbed that can ease sensor network researchers from tedious implementation issues, this experience will help students develop skills in the following important domains: Linux programming, NesC/TinyOS programming, and large-scale system design and software engineering.

802.11 Monitoring

Just as security policies for the wired network exist in organizations, with the growing deployment of 802.11 bases access mechanisms, there is a growing concern amongst network administrators, to ensure that the network is secure. However, unlike the wired network where one needs to be plugged into a jack in order to gain access, in the wireless network, the intruders/war drivers need not be physically located on the premises Thus, there is a growing need for a wireless monitoring solution that continuously monitors the wireless environment, detects any inconsistencies and can pre-empt any DOS attacks.This project is motivated by this requirement and the goal is to design a wireless monitoring system that can be deployed on laptops or smaller embedded platforms ( and hence is small enough to fit into 128MB Compact Flash cards) and have the capability of capturing, reporting and storing sniffed information on a per packet basis into a database

Steps involved (or things that you will learn on the way even if you don’t know):

1. Knowledge of 802.11 drivers (Cisco Aironet , Prism2 and Atheros based cards)
2. How to put the cards in monitoring mode
3. Understand RF monitoring
4. Capture packets and report to database
5. Build a database and interface for the monitoring application to report information to the database
6. Ability to view reported information in real-time (optional)