Projects

Comic strip Here is a couple of short project descriptions. You'll find project suitable for a wide range of objectives, including: You are also very welcome to come up with your own project: please, send me e-mail at  vl@eecs.cwru.edu .

Financial support is available or pending from CWRU (Nord), NASA (HRDD), and NSF (MWIR) funding for selected candidates.

Undergraduate Projects

Mobile Wireless Tracking

The tracking project is described in the presentation.

Minix driver port from Linux

Wrap up Linux driver into a minix server for automatic portability.

E-Parcel

E-Parcel is described here and in the EECS 423 Web page.

Nam to Flash or Shockwave converter

Ethernet Daisy Chains  New!!!

Most current Ethernet designs adopt a "star" design: a central hub or switch is connected to each one of the participating host. There are many advantages to this topology, but also some drawbacks, mostly in terms of difficulty of wiring and repairing. Therefore, this configuration is not always ideal for embedded devices, such as one would find in a manufacturing plant, in an automobile control network, or in the smart home. This project implements an alternative topology where devices are connected with daisy chain Ethernet cabling.  An additional advantage is that each host breaks the collision domain, thus improving the timeliness of data delivery, which is critical in embedded systems.
Ethernet daisy chains can be implemented with a desktop that has two network cards and NetBSD (or Linux) bridges. However, pure bridges are inadequate in that they do not support for the bridge to tap in the communication as a distinct host. Therefore, the bridge needs to be modified into a "tee" which replicates frames on the second interface and allows the bridge to receive IP datagrams. This can be done by appropriately configuring the loopback interface and bridging the Ethernet interfaces into the loopback. The bridge must additionally support cut-through switching and stochastic fair queuing. The  implementation of the tee is the first part of the project. In the second part, the tee is uploaded in on an embedded PC, the Soekris net4501 or a Force board, which will make it possible to use Ethernet tees for connecting embedded devices (robots, automotive systems, etc.) in a daisy chain. 

IP over USB New!!!

The goal of this project is to implement an IP router that uses only USB ports. The idea is to enable IP on embedded devices and to support pervasive computing. For example, IP/USB can provide Internet like connectivity to devices, such as USB cameras, appliances, or robots. These devices have a small footprint and can only host the smallest USB connectors - no Ethernet or optical here! An appropriate IP/USB stack and router enables IP on these devices and opens the door to Internet based embedded applications and middleware ( Jini , RIO , RTSP , etc). The project will use Embedded Linux (or any other UNIX like operating system suitable for embedded devices, at your choice) and the open source GnuZebra router. The initial development takes place on an ordinary desktop, which is then migrated to an embedded System-on-Module (e.g., Plug-and-Run ).  USB drivers might have to be developed. This project is especially indicated for EECS 290, EECS 396M, EECS 399M (Senior Project), a summer project, and/or work study.
 

Other projects.

These projects are especially suited for EECS 290, EECS 396M, EECS 399M (Senior Project), a summer project, and/or work study. (Pictures might take a little bit to download.) However, I wrote this one year ago, and a few things have changed ... please, send me an email for updates on this projects.

You might also want to look at previous and current .Net projects .

Hint: taking EECS 290 or 396M will give you a head start on any subsequent project as for example the senior project or a B.S./M.S. thesis. You can count both of them as technical electives if you are a CS major.

Broadcast Push

The goal of this project is to implement an end-to-end protocol that supports the functionalities of a  Reliable Multicast Transport or of Your Own Internet Distribution from the application layer and that is specifically targeted toward data dissemination, e.g. stock quote tape, news, etc.

Papers and Related projects

  1. Narada
  2. IETF reliable multicast working group includes drafts and RFCs on
    1. Reliable Multicast Transport
    2. Layered Congestion Control
    3. Forward Error Correction
    4. Layered Coding Transport
  3. IRTF reliable multicast group
  4. Your Own Internet Distribution includes a software prototype for end-to-end multicast
  5. Digital Fountain
  6. LSAM
  7. V. Liberatore.  Broadcast Scheduling for Set Requests DIMACS Workshop on Resource Management and Scheduling in Next Generation Networks, 2001.
  8. V. Liberatore. Caching and Scheduling for Broadcast Disk Systems. Tech. Rep. 98-71, 1998. UMIACS.
  9. V. Liberatore. Broadcast Disk Paging with a Small Cache , Tech. Rep. TR98-36, 1998, DIMACS.
  10. On Broadcast Disk Paging © SIAM (with Sanjeev Khanna ), SIAM Journal on Computing .

Current students

  1. Wei Li
  2. Wenhui Zhang

Filler traffic

The goal of this project is to exploit available bandwidth for background communication, including distributed computing and Internet infrastructure support. Nasser and Adam wrote this short paper to introduce the project and describe its current state.

Papers and Related projects

  1. Adam's project report: Part 1 , Part 2 .
  2. LSAM
  3. Venkata N. Padmanabhan and Randy H. Katz.  TCP Fast Start . Globecom 98.
  4. Seti@Home
  5. Flash
  6. N. Alzidi, A. Feldman, V. Liberatore. Effects of Filler Traffic in IP Networks.   DIMACS Mini-Workshop on Quality of Service Issues in the Internet, 2001.
  7. B. D. Davison and V. Liberatore. Pushing Politely: Improving Web Responsiveness One Packet at a Time . PAWS 2000.

Current students

  1. Joyce Varghese

Graduated students

  1. Rashmi Srivastava
  2. Nasser Al-zeidi
  3. Adam Feldman

Internet Robots

This project is fully staffed now. Please, check back in a few years.
Vincenzo Liberatore / vliberatore@acm.org