Renato Lo Cigno - Didattica/Teaching
Wireless Networks and Mobility


DIT home | my home | Teaching | back to faculty page



Exams ...

Remember to sign on ESSE3 for registering the result.
See the nex Exams official sessions

General Info & Program

The course is held jointly by Dr. Alessandro Villani and myself. I will cover mostly the theoric/descriptive parts, while Alessandro will take care of the labs.

The program is described on the official Faculty page. You can download a PDF version of the program if you want.
Don't be fooled by the fact that it is pretty similar to the program of the academic year 2003/2004: we have twice as much the time and we correspondingly do more material. The main difference is not in the number of topics, but in the insight we gain on them.

Credits, Computer Science and Engineering

As you probably know this course is offered both to Telecommunication Engineering and to Computer Science students. For CS students the credits are 12, for TE students only 6. Moreover CS students that have not changed their study plan will still have 6 credits.

What a mess!! ... and we have to cope with it.

Let's see if I can make some order in this all.

  • Computer Science students with the new study plan
    Easy. Just follow all the course, the lab, do the project, take the exam and you have the 12 credits.
  • Telecommunications Engineering students
    Your Area Council decided that the Lab is redundant, thus you are not required to follow it, nor to take the corresponding part of the exam; however, if you want to come in the lab to learn what we do, you're more than welcome.
    Additionally, since you are supposed to know much more than me on the propagation, modulation, coding, and PHY layer in general, the relative part of the program was deemed irrelevant, which means that you will have to know it at the exam, but the credits do not count.
    In other words, the relevant part of the course is all the theory that is not concerned with the physical layer. All in all will be roughly 50 hours in class, but unfortunately I cannot put them all at the beginning or at the end, since there is the lab and I have to dedicate 8-10 hours to the physical layer before doing the GSM and UMTS networks, which means during march.
    A consequence of the lab redundancy is that your project should not have to do with "hands-on" problems ... but we can derogate and find agreements if you have specific interests.
  • Computer Science students with the OLD study plan
    Just follow the material and rules of the year 2003/2004. Unfortunately, it is not possible to give you the option to follow just 50 hours and not the other 50, since the program is mixed up. So, if you're in this situation and you plan to follow the course this year, please, tell me and we find a solution.



Back to Top

Timetable & Rooms

During the first two weeks we'll do only "theory" 1-st and 2-nd week timetable, while all other weeks we'll have the lab on fridays. other weeks timetable.
Labs are mandatory for CS students while they can be skipped by TE students, who, as already said, are welcome to participate if they're interested.
CS students will be required to produce a summary of one of the labs (we'll assign them "on the flight") as a useful exercise to learn writing in preparation of the project for the exam.
I'll try to avoid completely references to the labs in the theory, so that TE students will not be penalized.



Back to Top

Teaching Material

We don't have any "official textbook." Here are the printouts of the slides I use to follow a predefined course while teaching. They are by no means a textbook and I will spend maybe half a lesson on a single slide and ... slide over the next 10 in 10 minutes. They are intended to help you in scribbling notes, not to substitute the lessons.



LAB material, slides, aditional pointers, Add-on material etc.
  • Standards web sites and other useful links for additional details on Lab-related topics, arguments cited but not part of the cours and not only (they are not "ordered" following any criteria, just thrown in)
  • Papers about WEP weaknesses.
  • A very recent (as of May 2005) Communciation Magazine special issue on CDMA2000, the USA "UMTS". The papers are downloadable from Digital Library and/or IEEE Xplore, thus you can read them only from UniTn addresses. Vol.43 Issue 4, April 2005 pointer



    Back to Top

    Bibliography and additional material

    Besides the books indicated at within the program, there are an enormous number of publications covering, wireless networks or specifica aspects thereof.
    Besides the obvious consideration that it is impossible to know (or even list!) them all, many of them, specially concerning wireless LANs have to problem to be either very inprecise (read: full of errors!), or very generic (little information to be found), or very badly writtes so they are difficult to read. The three problems are combined randomly in different books

    I prefer to indicate here a few hadbooks that can be useful and web sites that are easier (and cheaper!) to consult. However, for web sites I cannot guarrantee that all the information is correct.

    • 802.11 Handbook: A designer's Companion , Bob O'Hara and Al Petrick, IEEE Press, 1999, is a reasonable booklet explaining the standard (1999 version) in accessible language. Since the authors participated in the standard definition it is reasonably correct and accurate. The authors maintain a site where additional (very little!) material is posted including a useful list of acronims.
    • O'Reilly's books are generally very approximate, Italian translations are old and inaccurate, but they are cheap and normally available very early on the market.
    • The Wi-Fi Alliance Web site provides useful information from the economic and marketing point of view. The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit international association whose aim if fostering 802.11 market by certifying the interoperability of WLAN products based on IEEE 802.11 standars
    • GSM World is the official site of the GSM association, which includes all major GSM operators in the world.
    • The 3GPP and The 3GPP2 are informal bodies that are fostering the introduction and harmonization of UMTS (3GPP) and CDMA2000 (3GPP2): the USA equivalent of UMTS. The standardization effort has practivally moved into these bodies and ETSI as well as its USA couterparts as TIA accept the proposals without significant modifications.
    • Those interested in science and technical history can start from this page and browse its links; however, informations there a divulgative and unchecked, thus try to accept them with critical spirit and double check them whenever seems strange or not convincing.
    • A reasonable overview of basic GSM systems (printable) was put on the web in 1999 by John Scourias of the University of Waterloo in Canada.



    Back to Top

    Exams

    The exam consists of two parts, and is structurally identical for CS and TE students, what is changed is the program and the amount of work required.
    The first part is a "Small Project," which can be related to the laboratories (or around them, or similar), or can be a complilation on a subject related to the course (but not covered by the lessons). The second part is an oral discussion concerning the theory parts.
    The Project can be completed at (almost) any time and the oral part can be done after it, say within two weeks. The oral part cannot be done before concluding the project.
    Before taking the exam CS students need to have completed the summary of the lab assigned to them. The summary will be corrected in order to help improve writing skills for the short project layout; however, the lab summary doesn't have any wheight in the final exam ... although you cannot take the exam if you do not do it!

    Projects proposals
    Project themes and arguments will be proposed and discussed during the labs and lessons, however, if you have your own proposal we can consider togheter if it is within the scope of the course.
    I keep here a page with all the available projects, a short description of them, and the name (if any) of who is doing the project.

    Next Exams Sessions

    • Monday June 20
    • Monday July 18
    • Thursday August 25


    Back to Top

    Consulence

    Additional clarifications, explanations, datails, etc. can be obtained at any time during lesson or soon after.
    Single/group consulence outside official lessons can be arranged in my office with a simple mail; I avoid "official and fixed" receiving hours because they are a waste of time for everybody.
    Simple doubts can be submitted (and solved) via e-mail.



    Back to Top

    White Papers are technical documents not strictly related to the products that vendors publish to foster their specific technical point of view of some specific areas, e.g., network integration, WLAN evolution, etc.
    They are written to look as written by an independend observer, though they're obviously not, since they reflect the "technical vision" of the firm and its marketing strategy.

    Back to support material

    • Navigation Shortcuts
    General Info
    Timetable
    Material
    Bibliography
    Exams
    Consulence


    DIT home | my home | Teaching | back to faculty page

    ©2002/2005 DIT - University of Trento - last update 26-04-2005