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Nomadic Communications AA 2010/2011

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. Labs are mandatory, part of the exam will be based on Lab reports.

Calendar

  • We begin the course with a rush on theory, trying to have all the required concepts in place beforewe start the Labs. This means that the first three weeks we have only theory:
    • Tuesday Feb. 22, 2:30-4:30 PM room A213
    • Wednesday Feb. 23, 2:30-4:30 PM room A216
    • Friday Feb. 25, 2:30-4:30 PM room A216
    • Tuesday Mar. 1, 2:30-4:30 PM room A213
    • Wednesday Mar 2, 2:30-4:30 PM room A216
    • Friday Mar. 4, 2:30-4:30 PM room A216
    • Monday Mar. 7, 8:30-10:30 PM room A213
    • Wednesday Mar 9, 2:30-4:30 PM room A216
    • Friday Mar. 11, 2:30-4:30 PM room A216
  • From March 15 we start the regular calendar
    • Theory: Mondays 8:30-10:30 PM room A213
    • Labs
      • Wednesdays 2:30-6:30 PM, room 107 in III IRST Pavillion. On Wednesdays Alessandro will explain the laboratory topic, help you setup experiments and answer all questions.
      • Fridays 2:30-6:30 PM, room 107 in III IRST Pavillion is reserved for you to complete experiments, re-do experiments whose results were not satisfactory etc. You are on your own and responsible for the material you take.
      • You should make groups or 2-4 people, best number is 3, to make the labs. Each group will produce two Lab Reports (details will be given later) that makes up about 50% of the course evaluation. The remaining part will be oral and discuss theory.
      • Given this year we should make 5-6 groups in all there is no need to alternate groups, so you have more time to do experiments and finish the reports.
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Bill Board

  • Thursday Apr. 14: Prof. Gringoli is still sick, the planned seminar on Open WRT will be help on Friday April 29. In the meantime ou can have a look at the Openfwwf project
  • Friday Mar. 25: Due to the concomintant exam of Concurrency Theory on Wednesday April 13, the laboratory is moved to Friday Apr. 15.
  • Wednesday Mar. 16: Lessons are suspended for the ICT days Placement; the first lab will be Friday Mar. 18 with Alessandro.
  • Mar. 3: As agreed yesterday, we moved the theory lesson to Mondays 8:30-10:30 same room.

Teaching and Support 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 ... surf over the next 10 in 10 minutes. They are intended to help you in scribbling notes, not to substitute the lessons.

Labs

Additional Material

Sites and Books

Besides the obvious consideration that it is impossible to know (or even list!) all books on wireless networks, many of them, specially concerning wireless LANs have the problem to be either very sketchy (read: full of errors!), or very generic (little information to be found), or very badly written so they are difficult to read. The three problems are combined randomly in different books. I prefer to indicate a few books on networking in general where you can fill the gaps you have (if any) in your preparation, and web-sites of reasonable quality (at least they exist and I don't frown at the first few lines).

  • James F. Kurose, Keith W. Ross, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, 4-th edition, Pearson (book site), very good for Computer Science studentsbecause of its approach from applications down to the physical layer

  • Douglas E. Comer, Computer Networks and Internets with Internet Applications, 4-th edition, Prentice Hall, (book site)

  • William Stallings, Data and Computer Communications, 8-th edition, Pearson (book site)


Just for the braves
The PDF of the 802.11 standard, ver. 2007. Includes 802.11b/g/a/h; 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 1200 pages!

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Exams

The exam comprises the Lab reports and an oral part discussing theory and the simple problems of performance and dimensioning we discuss in class. The two parts have approximately the same weight. You have two possibilities to "deliver" your reports:

  • Immediately: deadlines will be given to you by Alessandro during the Labs. The report will quickly checked by Alessandro to give hints on how to improve it or re-do it completely if it is highly unsatisfactory. In other words you have a chance to improve it before the final delivery.

  • Delayed: this means delivering 5-10 days before the oral, which must be reserved via e-mail, in this case the delivered reports are the final ones and will be evaluated as they are.

The oral will make the rest of the exam. We strongly encourage the lab groups to coordinate and try to have the exam all together. This greatly simplifies management, teaches you group and cooperative working, and also (normally) increases the quality of your oral exam, since joint study fosters discussions.
The oral part covers all material exposed in class, thus reading the slides is normally not sufficient to pass the exam, because in class much more is discussed and explained than the simple bullets and schemes of the slides. Discussion and clarifications can also be asked around the Lab reports.
The oral part can be taken at any time when you're ready, taking an appointment at least 1 week before via e-mail.
Remember to register for the exam on ESSE3 in any case, otherwise we can't register.
The oral part can be taken only after the lab reports are completed. No exception can be done on this rule for any reason.

The dates below are the opening of the official sessions, the oral can be taken at any time, registers will be closed early July, end of July, end of September. Rember to register on ESSE3 in the session you want to give the oral.

Next dates

  • Thursday Jan. 19
  • Wednesday Feb. 8

Please remember to register for the exam BEFORE taking the oral exam, otherwise we can't register the grade. The dates above are just the bureaucracy date, you can take the oral any time making an appointment with me a few days (1 week at least) in advance.

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Meeting Me and Doubts

Additional clarifications, explanations, details, etc. can be obtained at any time during lesson or soon after.
Single/group consultancy 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.

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