Corsi anni precedenti: bottom page
The course is held jointly with Dr. Francesco Gringoli.
I will cover mostly the theoric/descriptive parts, while Francesco will take care of the labs. The program is described on the official Faculty page. Labs are mandatory, part of the exam will be based on Lab reports. This year the labs will be centered on protocol design and manipulation on OpenFWWF-enabled devices.
OpenFWWF is a project that provides an easy and inexpensive platform to implement new Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanism, and it is a valid alternative to expensive ad-hoc platforms for protocol experiments in the ISM bands. The combination of OpenFWWF and b43 driver is a complete and cheap tool that makes testing of new MAC easy achievable. Francesco Gringoli is the main developer of OpenFWWF.
Questo spazio è dedicato alle comunicazioni di servizio, e mantiene quindi anche la storia delle variazioni del corso. È una buona idea dare un'occhiata al sito prima di ogni lezione sia per trovare eventuali novità che per verificare il materiale didattico distribuito.
We begin the course with a rush on theory, in order to have enough knowledge of Wireless Networks, WIFI and 802.11 standard and systems before we start the Labs. This means that weeks 2 and 3 we have 4 hours of theory as follows:
March 7 we start the regular calendar
The formal exams dates during the summer will be defined later during the course.
You have to subscribe via ESSE3 when you want to take the exam, however the actual date of the exam is free, you just have to take an appointment with me. I strongly encourage groups to take the oral together, but there is no fromal requirement on this.
The oral can be taken when the lab reports are delivered in their final form, but you have to allow me 3-4 days minimum to correct the reports.
This year the labs are centered on actual impementation and design of MAC protocols on embedded Linux devices featuring the OpenFWWF platform.
OpenFWWF is a reverse-engineered platform that provides an easy and inexpensive platform to implement new Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanisms and protocols, and is a valid alternative to simulations and expensive ad-hoc platforms. The combination of OpenFWWF and b43 driver is a complete and cheap tool that makes testing of new MAC easy achievable, which let us run true lab work on nomadic systems and appreciate differences between design chioces and various options in wireless protocol design.
Labs are best done in groups. Groups of three are the best, but two or even singles can be accepted. More than three the work bocomes too dispersive.
Here is a template and LaTeX style to write decent reports, with some hints on the organization.
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 ... surf over the next 10 in 10 minutes. They are intended to help you in scribbling notes, not to substitute the lessons. They are normally posted before the lesson, but sometimes they are modified to improve them also after discussion in class, in this case they are marked with the date of the modification. If you want to have an idea of the whole material you can check the material of the past years, but I normally change part of the course, so do not entirely rely on old material.
The 802.11 standard and related documents are available for free download (but you need to register) from the IEEE 802.11 website It includes all parts of the standard including MACs and PHYs definitions: 802.11b/g/a/h/n; 802.11e and much more. You can consider it the ultimate source of information, but it is unfortunately a bit hard to read and ... it is 2793 pages! Use it to check values of parameters or to determine the exact meaning of fields etc. Chapter 8 and 18 are suggested reading as Gringoli said in the lab presentation.
All the lab material produced by Francesco Gringoli is available through this page he hosts. Most of the material is also mirrored in the list below, but check the original site if you have doubts on updates and similar stuff