Catalog Description: Wireless Sensor Networks (3, Fa) Sensor network applications, design and analysis. Deployment; energy-efficiency; wireless communications; data-centric operation; capacity and lifetime; collaborative signal processing; reliability, fault-tolerance and security. Prerequisite: EE 450; recommended preparation: EE 465, good programming/mathematical skills

Instructor: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, bkrishna@usc.edu
Teaching Assistant: Amitabha Ghosh, amitabhg@usc.edu

The objective of this course (aimed primarily at Ph.D. students and research-oriented masters students) is to introduce students to the latest developments in both theory and practice in the emerging area of wireless embedded sensor networks.

The required prerequisite for this class, EE 450, may be waived for Ph.D. students. Beyond this it is highly recommended that the student have take EE 465 and CS 402. This will be a challenging class - masters students enrolling are expected to have done very well in prior courses (> 3.5 GPA), and to have taken other 5-level courses already.

We will cover a range of topics from time synchronization and localization to wireless link characterization, medium access, sleep scheduling, querying, routing, and transport layer techniques. Besides lectures covering the state of the art in this field, we will read and discuss several recent papers in the area. There will also be tutorials on how to program wireless sensor devices (motes). In addition to weekly homework assignments, a significant part of the course grade will be determined by a final group project in which the students are required to demonstrate either a programmed implementation and evaluation of a protocol on the wireless devices, or provide some novel theoretical contribution.

Textbook: the text for the class will be the instructor's text: Networking Wireless Sensors, Cambridge University Press, 2006. The book will be supplemented with additional notes and (lots of) paper readings.