Recently, mobile devices such as smartphones, wearables, and smart devices have overtaken PCs as the predominant platform for computing and communication. The shift to the mobile platform has brought with it a host of new challenges. Mobile devices have severely constrained energy capacity, their network connectivity is exclusively provided by unreliable bandwidth-constrained wireless links, and they carry a standard set of sensors that are seemingly insufficient for certain applications and also can inadvertently leak private information about their users.
In this course, we will discuss research that addresses the challenges introduced by the mobile platform by blurring the lines between traditional research areas in computer science.
As with many other research seminars, the course will be predominately a discussion of a set of research papers. However, we will also discuss the origins of these research projects, the impact that they had on the research community, and their impact on industry (spoiler alert: the impact on industry generally is much harder to predict than the impact on research). The course will also include a quarter-long project intended to be the seed of future publishable work.
This course will be mostly self contained. However, it will be useful to have some background in undergraduate networking (CSE 123) and operating systems (CSE 120). If you plan on working on a course project that involves embedded systems, you should either be a self-taught embedded systems hacker or have taken an embedded systems course (e.g., CSE 237A).
If you are taking the course for full credit (4 credits - letter grade), grading will be based on the following breakdown: Individual or group project (50%), paper notes and discussion lead (25%), and class participation (25%).
If you are taking the course for partial credit (2 credits - pass/fail), grading will be based on the following breakdown: paper notes and discussion lead (50%) and class participation (50%).
Your discussion notes should serve the following two purposes: as a quick reference guide for the paper and as an outline of the discussion that you will lead in class.
You should answer the following questions about the paper for the quick reference guide:
Your discussion-lead notes should consist of a list of the questions that you plan to use to seed the in class discussion.
Day | Topic | Details |
---|---|---|
Week 1: Introduction to mobile research | ||
Mon Jan 9 | Introduction | |
Wed Jan 11 | Defining Ubiquitous (and Mobile) Computing |
(1) The Computer for the 21st Century (2) Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing by Weiser |
Fri Jan 13 | Discuss project ideas | Project idea selection due next Friday (Jan 20) |
Week 2: Mobile energy efficiency | ||
Mon Jan 16 | No class (MLK day) | |
Wed Jan 18 | Classic work on mobile energy efficiency | Energy-aware adaptation for mobile applications |
Fri Jan 20 | Project proposal discussion and finalize paper lead assignments |
(1) One-page project proposal writeup due Thursday at 10:00pm (please email it to schulman@cs.ucsd.edu). (2) Paper lead should be selected before class. Sign-up sheet will be posted here by Tuesday at 10:00pm. |
Week 3: Mobile energy efficiency (continued) | ||
Mon Jan 23 | The most advanced smartphone energy model | Fine Grained Energy Accounting on Smartphones with Eprof |
Wed Jan 25 | Challenging the accuracy of smartphone energy models | Evaluating the Effectiveness of Model-Based Power Characterization |
Fri Jan 27 | Friday hackathon | |
Week 4: Efficient outdoor localization | ||
Mon Jan 30 | Predicting when a mobile device will have strong WiFi | BreadCrumbs: Forecasting Mobile Connectivity |
Wed Feb 1 | Using cell towers as location beacons | Energy-Efficient Positioning for Smartphones using Cell-ID Sequence Matching |
Fri Feb 3 | Friday hackathon | |
Week 5: Energy efficiency and indoor localization | ||
Mon Feb 6 | The latest and greatest technique for indoor localization with WiFi | Drowsy Power Management |
Wed Feb 8 | Using LED lighting as location beacons | Luxapose: Indoor Positioning with Mobile Phones and Visible Light |
Fri Feb 10 | Discussion on indoor localization & Friday hackathon | Indoor Localization: Are We There Yet? |
Week 6: Wireless power and novel applications of common smartphone sensors | ||
Mon Feb 13 | What smartphone sensors can reveal about the road | Nericell: rich monitoring of road and traffic conditions using mobile smartphones |
Wed Feb 15 | Battery-less sensors can be wirelessly powered by radio signals |
(1) Design of an RFID-Based Battery-Free Programmable Sensing Platform (2) Enabling Ubiquitous Sensing with RFID |
Fri Feb 17 | Detecting sleep apnea with sonar | Contactless Sleep Apnea Detection on Smartphones |
Week 7: Making sleep less painful | ||
Mon Feb 20 | No class (President's Day) | |
Wed Feb 22 | Efficient short-lived tasks on mobile devices | Rethinking Energy-Performance Trade-Off in Mobile Web Page Loading |
Fri Feb 24 | Friday hackathon | |
Week 8: Mesh networking | ||
Mon Feb 27 | Classic mesh networking work that spawned a billion dollar startup (that didn't end up selling mesh networking products) | Link-level Measurements from an 802.11b Mesh Network |
Wed Mar 1 | Survey of the massive pile of existing work on mesh networking | Wireless mesh networks: a survey |
Fri Mar 3 | Friday hackathon | |
Week 9: Security | ||
Mon Mar 6 | Unexpected information leakage from smartphone sensors | Gyrophone: Recognizing Speech From Gyroscope Signals |
Wed Mar 8 | Mobile devices can secure medical devices | They can hear your heartbeats: non-invasive security for implantable medical devices |
Fri Mar 10 | Friday hackathon | |
Week 10: Project presentations | ||
Mon Mar 13 | Project presentations (day 1) | |
Wed Mar 15 | Project presentations (day 2) | |
Fri Mar 17 | Friday hackathon |