List
of 4th year projects to be supervised by Associate Professor Abbas
Jamalipour in 2004
Note to students: All proposed topics require
good (more than average) academic background in data communication networks and
wireless communications as well as serious time commitment of not less than 15
hours per week and student enthusiasm in order to get a good result at the end.
Many of these projects also involve computer programming, so good programming
skill will be an advantage. All projects initial literature survey,
preliminary investigations and supervisor consultations will be started around
May, but the major research will be carried out in the second semester. If you
need further information about individual topics, you may contact the
supervisor in person in his office, Electrical Engineering Bldg., 7th
floor, room 751.
This
security algorithm was developed by the supervisor and a previous student. In
this project two students will implement the new security technique in a
wireless environment. The implementation includes programming of the protocol
on end users host machine and the access point sides. The project requires
very good programming skill and knowledge about the security algorithms in
wireless LAN systems. The two students must work together closely throughout
the project.
With
the increasing number of use of wireless LAN for personal and corporative
purposes, it is essential to find the available networks and their performance
on a real-time basis regardless of physical location of a user. There are a few
new commercial products that can do this and also some newer versions of
wireless LAN PC cards provide limited information to users. In this project,
the students will develop a non-commercial package that can trace available
wireless networks, their usage and performance, such as throughput and delay,
number of users, packet loss, security algorithm used, and so on. The package
should include a user friendly interface and can work on usual Windows
environment, with minimum hardware required for wireless LAN access. Good
programming skill especially for development on Windows environment is
essential for this project.
Second-generation
(2G) and third-generation (3G) wireless cellular networks have different
security techniques for their users, terminals, and the network. In this
project, you will research all those techniques including AAA (Authentication,
Authorization and Accounting) in detail and compare their vulnerability to
unauthorized access, either to terminal handset, to personal information, or to
the network billing information.
Different
security techniques have been developed in the past for the wireless LAN
standards, including encryption/decryption algorithms, WEP, TKIP, WPA, IEEE
802.11i and so on. In this project, you will research on available techniques
and analyze their effectiveness. You will also compare those techniques with
those used commonly in wired LAN, including but not limited to VPN.
IP2BMAP is a software package for IP traffic modeling developed by Prof. Christoph Lindemann, University of Dortmund, Germany. Two student will install this software on a Linux machine and start collecting information about Internet traffic and model it using analytical models. The project requires good background in traffic engineering and mathematics.
AJP6 Increasing security and range of wireless LAN by using directional antennas
It
is understood that by using directional beam antennas it is possible to
increase typical range of a single wireless LAN access point to 2.5 km or so.
In this project, you will research on whether this can also increase the
security measures or not. Signal interception would be considered mainly while
other security measures are also considered.
AJP7 Calculation of traffic load increase due to encryption algorithms in data networks
Encryption
algorithms are the oldest techniques in securing data networks and many
techniques have already been developed and deployed in real networks. In this
project, you will analyze modern encryption algorithms and numerically
investigate any increase on network traffic due to such deployments. You will
then further work on recommending methods that can decrease this increased load
for the emerging data networks.
Security
in wireless and wired network has usually been considered as an independent
factor, particularly from other quality of service (QoS) metrics. This is
mainly recognized in network and technology level QoS. In this project, you
will investigate on how the security can be mapped into other typical QoS
measures. This will increase the security in the network and make the network
management easier than its current situation.
Many
network viruses increase the traffic load as a result of denial of service
(DoS). In this project, you will design a small real-time server that monitors
any excessive traffic in part of a network and try to locate the source in an
iterative and hierarchical manner. Good programming background especially with
Windows operating systems is essential for this project.
These
days, every building has a local wireless LAN network, usually working at a
frequency band chosen from a limited set. In this project, you will investigate
the interference resulted from coexistence of two or more wireless LANs with a
small spatial separation and their effects on network performance. Methods to
decrease such problems will also be investigated.
Third-generation
wireless cellular networks (3G) will use the wireless LAN technology to support
high-speed indoor communications. However, there are many differences in
characteristics of the two systems, mainly in their date rate speed and delay.
In this project, you will investigate those differences and find out how those
issues could affect the implementation of such system difficult.
Wi-Fi
is the wireless LAN standard mainly referring to the IEEE 802.11 family and in
particular IEEE 802.11b and it is widely in use for personal and corporative
users for indoor and short-range high-speed Internet access. WiMax on the other
hand is a new standard under IEEE 802.16 for long-range (up to 50 km) high
speed Internet access, several times more than Wi-Fi. In this project you will
gather the state-of-the art information about the two emerging technologies and
compare their capabilities and features.