DevLab portfolio

This list contains the current graduation assignments for which we are searching for student from both Bachelor (HBO) and Master (WO) level. Are you a student in the field of informatics, electronics, electromechanics or embedded systems and are you interested in one of our assignments? Send an e-mail to Lex van Gijsel with your resume and your interest (short).

Most assignments further develop the MyriaNed platform.
Myrianed "is about the development of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology that is both ultra lowpower and scalable. A WSN is a network composed of resource scarce sensor nodes that communicate with each other wirelessly. The core of MyriaNed is a low dutycycle periodic TDMA MAC layer in combination with a gossip based data dissemination protocol."

WSN Energy Harvesting

This assignments focuses on the study, implementation and experimentation of an energy management system between the DMFC (Direct Methanol Fuel Cell) and WSN. This system should take the characteristics of both the DMFC and WSN into account and optimize the flow of energy. A possible solution could be implemented with a small embedded processor.
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Sensor Interface for WSN

The aim of this assignment is to study alternatives for sampling sensors with a rate that is a multiple of the gMac TDMA period. The result of this study can be the development of a smart sensor, a sensor together with minimal hardware that allows for relative high speed sampling by lowread read out of the aggregated sensor data.
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MyriaNed Radio

Atmel has recently introduced a fully integrated AVR processor with radio, the ATmega128RFA1, all in one package. We want to port our software to this platform, since the API of this radio has some nice features which are implemented in software on our current platform. The development will be realized with a few development kits from Atmel. The result will be demonstrated as an experiment that will make use of the higher level software that is already available from the MyriaNed research programme at DevLab.
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MyriaNed Sniffer Node software

The current implementation will be enhanced with more sophisticated functions and a better performance. Like the current implementation, it will make use of one of the available nodes, that is buildup with an Atmel ATxmega128 processor and a Nordic nRF24L01 2.4GHz radio, and is connected via USB to a host computer.
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Wireless monitoring of sensor networks

The assignment is focused on creating an efficient wireless network protocol to transmit the monitoring data from the listening nodes to a single PC via a network of specialized monitoring nodes.
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An FPGA for Wireless Sensor Nodes

Targeted at WSN debugging a hardware frontend is developed to enable a PC to cooperate in a WSN. The frontend is based on an RF receiver stage, an fast ADC, an FPGA to perform DSP preprocessing and a highspeed USB interface. The assignment is to implement the MyriaNed media access and physical layers in the FPGA of the frontend.
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WSN Localization

The aim of this assignment is to combine two localization methods: lateral localization and dead reckoning. The location of the localized WSN nodes are to be communicated to a virtual world (such as second life) to reflect the realworld location of the WSN node in the virtual world.
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Interfacing with Virtual Worlds

The assignment will exist of developing the interaction possibilities from and visualization in the virtual world Second Life (SL). Interaction possibilities are on the level of creating events, by using Linden Scripting Language (LSL) that can be triggered by the user of SL, or by creating actions which are triggered by events from the real world.
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Software Defined Radio for Wireless Sensor Networks

Targeted at WSN debugging a hardware frontend is developed to enable a PC to cooperate in a WSN. The frontend is based on an RF transceiver stage, an fast ADC, an FPGA to perform DSP preprocessing and a highspeed USB interface. The assignment is to have this hardware be run on a Linux PC cooperating with GNURadio (www.gnuradio.org). Additionally using GNURadio software defined radio components, a full MyriaNed stack must be created. The target is that de PC processes raw RF data and performs all demodulation and decoding in software (C/C++).
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Highlevel MyriaNed Simulation

Simulation of wireless sensor networks can be done at various abstraction levels. To allow high speed large scale simulation experiments we want the simulator to abstract from the MAC layer. In this assignment a model of the MAC layer is to be derived in close cooperation with the Ph.D. researchers that work in the ALwEN (www.alwen.nl) project. This model then is then implemented in the MyriaSim (OMNet++/Mixim) based simulation environment.
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Bursty traffic Integrated in MyriaCore

MyriaCore is the MAC layer together with a scheduler and dispatcher, and can be seen as a miniOS. MyriaCore is timingmaster in the sense that it dictates exactly when it is time for MAC related processing or executing application software. MyriaCore is the MAC layer together with a scheduler and dispatcher, and can be seen as a miniOS. MyriaCore is timingmaster in the sense that it dictates exactly when it is time for MAC related processing or executing application software.
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WSN Antennas

Currently DevLab has about 500 Wireless Sensor Nodes, called MyriaNode. This is our current experimental platform, which operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. The research is now up to a level that we need special antenna requirements that relate to a very small Chip Scale Package, which can be attached to (conducting) goods, on a human body and cloths.
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Synchronizing Wireless Sensor Nodes

The assignment is to find and implement an algorithm to keep all nodes of the network in sync by measuring communications of neighboring nodes and marginally adapting the time of the active part of the duty cycle, in order to optimize communications and conservation of power.
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WSN Localization (2)

This assignments focuses on the implementation of the NIDES algorithm on the MyriaNed nodes and test and validate the operation and its behaviour in a large network. DevLab has a large experimental network of 1000 nodes that can be used for this work.
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MyriaNed Sniffer Tools

The assignment is the development of a more advanced and higher level WSAN analysis method and supportive tool set. One of the ideas is to use a tool that is already available, and is developed by prof. Kay Rӧmer from ETH in Zurich.
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Quality of Service experiments

The research on the Quality of Service properties of MyriaNed is done by two PhD students from the TU/e, as part of the ALwEN (www.alwen.nl) research programme of DevLab. The theoretical models that are used for this research need a constant validation with real life behaviour and experiments. The master assignment is in the context of this research and concentrates on practical experiments.
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Security experiments with MyriaNed

The research work in the context of the ALwEN project that has been done so far is mostly related to theoretical work, architectural analysis and modeling. Now is the time for reallife experiments. DevLab has a large WSAN network of 1000 MyriaNodes that is used by the researchers for all kind of experiments. The MyriaNodes have a hardware Crypto engine that will be used for the security experiments. The work will consist of the implementation of the security algorithm.
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