CSE 4215/5431 Term paper instructions


This project concerns two papers on MAC protocols you have read before - the paper describing SMAC (Medium Access Control with Coordinated Adaptive Sleeping for Wireless Sensor Networks, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, June 2004) and the paper describing RMAC (available from the class webpage).

The questions your project will address are:
(a)  what are the contributions of the SMAC paper?
(b)  keeping in mind the specific requirements of sensor networks, what is the quality of the solution(s) proposed in the paper?
(c)  under what circumstances is the RMAC algorithm more useful?
(d)  are there any drawbacks that you see with either algorithm, and do you have any ideas for addressing the shortcomings?
(e)  Is the experimental evidence in each paper convincing to you? (Give reasons and/or suggestions).
(f) Are the analyses in the papers convincing to you? (Give reasons and/or 
suggestions).

You should submit a report no longer than 3 pages using no smaller than 10 point and no larger than 12 point fonts. If you wish to include references they do not count towards this page limit.

The report should not regurgitate text from the papers, and it should be a critical review. The writing should be coherant and in the style of normal scientific text. Feel free to include mathematical formulas if you desire.