Master/Bachelor Thesis - Proposals

Robot Localisation and Search

Contact: Mikael Asplund

Energy optimization for embedded telecom applications

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

Automatic profiling of Android applications

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

With the exponential growth of applications in Android smart-phones, the number of security threats on these devices is becoming more and more important. Because of this, there is a need of automatic methodologies to profile applications that access sensitive data on the phone, use the phone's communication mechanisms, and interact with the user.

This bachelor thesis requires to implement a program on Android for profiling its running applications, e.g. log messages sent/received, system calls, etc. but also the interactions with the application (e.g. keys typed). In the context of the thesis, the application to profile will be a game application which will be the most representative of games' applications of the Android platform. In other words, the student will have to survey every category of games' applications that are existing nowadays in Android platform and select the most representative game application. In order to get the most of the profiling, the student will have to play with the game and test every possible interaction. If the time permits, the student will implement a monkey for Android. A monkey is a program which generates pseudo-streams of user events such as clicks, touches, or gestures, as well as a number of system-level events to stress-test applications. The monkey to implement will generate the interactions (e.g. keys typed) which were previously recorded during the game application profiling.

A secure BATMAN implementation for the Android platform

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

Traditional internet based networks are composed of many networks with a number of core nodes. These nodes, which are owned by several cooperating entities, route the data according to pre-established agreements. As opposed to this, in mesh networks, there are many nodes than do not only transmit their own data, but they also forward the data of other nodes. The information routing in mesh networks is not based on agreements, but on dynamic routing or dissemination protocols. These protocol can be classified under "ad-hoc networking". One example protocol is BATMAN, a totally decentralised routing protocol that dynamically creates the routes to forward the data. It was originally intended for communication in rural areas where commodity mobile handsets can set up a network with no pre-existing infrastructure.

The decentralisation and the adaptability to network topology changes are the main advantages of BATMAN. Nevertheless, the information exchanged among the nodes to keep the routing tables is not protected and makes it vulnerable to attacks. The purpose of this thesis project is to 1) implement the BATMAN protocol on an Android platform (or find open source code that already does it). For this existing (C++) code on a simulation platform in our lab can be used as a basis. 2) Reduce the security threats by enhancing BATMAN with authentication based on X.509 certificates on the same platform. For this part existing code from another Master student project can be integrated.

Energy-efficient instant messaging

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

The growth of wireless networks and mobile communications has provided wide used services such as instant messaging (IM). IM has extended the capabilities of the previous text messages (SMS) towards multimedia applications leveraging mobile data connections. The rise in their popularity is such that they have reached up to the point of replacing SMS in some cases. Applications providing these services govern the power hungry wireless interfaces of smartphones making the study of the energy consumption characteristics of SMS and IM to gain relevance. The goal of this project is to study and compare the energy consumption characteristics of different IM applications (e.g., Whatsapp, GTalk, Skype, Viber...) and the protocols they employ using the SMS energy consumption as baseline. They study should propose a more energy efficient IM and develop a prototype considering other message exchange protocols such as XMPP, RCS-e or MQTT.

Energy efficient location sharing application for smartphones

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

The introduction of smartphones with Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities has increased the number of applications devoted to location sharing. These applications, such as Google Latitude, transmit the position of the user and, at the same time, request the position of other users to show them on a map on the smartphone screen.

While the energy consumption of these applications because of the usage of the GPS device has been extensively studied, this is not the case for the consumption associated to the 3G network interface. The data associated with these applications is typically sent in XML JSON format over HTTP. Although the amount of application data it is relatively small, its frequent transmission and the overhead of the communication protocols used may trigger the most energy expensive 3G network interface modes. Other data transmission protocols, with very low overhead specifically optimised for sending small amounts of data, exist. One example of them is the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol for machine to machine communication.

This project will be devoted to create a prototype of location sharing application based on the low overhead MQTT data transmission protocol. Then, the data transmission and/or energy consumption of the 3G interface will be analysed and compared with an existing location sharing application based on HTTP.

This thesis work is intended for students in the final year of a 5-year program (or Master thesis) who have obtained excellent grades in courses on networking and programming.

Application-centric and energy-aware adaptation of wireless data transmission

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

Seamless mobile communication over multiple networks of cellular, mesh and wifi networks is becoming a reality, and an enabler for a growing number of applications on handheld devices. Although network bandwidth, memory and computation power is becoming less of a bottleneck as technologies develop, the need for optimizing energy use remains urgent, and likely to increase in the future. The current level of energy at a radio network controller end of a cellular network is determined by the system vendor (e.g. Ericsson) setting certain parameters, usually based on requirements of an operator (e.g. ATT) who in turn bases the requirements on envisioned traffic load, mobility patterns, physical network and area characteristics. At the handset level, a manufacturer of a device tends to optimize the battery use against other parameters such as cost, time-to market, size and perceived market trends. The user of applications is therefore bound by decisions made at the time of manufacturing and acquisition of each of the two ends. However, each user needs are different depending on the common types of application, data volume, elasticity, interruption tolerance and many other factors, varying over time. The remaining level of stored energy in a battery is sometimes of a vital importance for a user, and would make a difference if there were any choices available to the user at the application layer and on a temporal basis. This project aims to study the basic building blocks for a user/application centric energy adaptation, and builds on results from a current thesis project that measures the energy characteristics of a modern Ericsson communication module for GSM, 2.5G and 3G communication that is a component in many modern handheld devices (e.g. an IPad). While the aims of that project is to find the energy footprint as a function of different transmission loads and types (from browsing to multimedia, gaming and other types of traffic patterns), this Master thesis project will focus on the adaptation algorithms to optimize from a user perspective. In addition to the one-hop cellular technologies, the new project will include Mesh communication based on the 802.11s technology.

Fault and recovery propagation in automotive embedded controllers

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

Systems that are operated in adverse conditions and use non-expensive components are also likely to suffer the impacts from transient and permanent faults, resulting in multiple (degraded) modes of operation for each of the components. The existing version of EMS in Scania trucks includes on average 3 modes for each of the involved components. In order to choose the right mode of operation for control modules, the components and derived signals thereof have to be continuously diagnosed, the results of diagnostic tests recorded on-line, and later revised when the fault is corrected; either by the service mechanic, an action by the driver, or by a physical condition that reverses/eliminates a transient.

This Masters thesis addresses the architectural decisions and interaction models among controller components such that desirable fault propagation and recovery sequences can be verified and enforced. The work includes the study of the tools associated with AADL (Architecture Analysis and Design Language) for modelling and analysis of such propagation flows in automotive applications.

This project is performed in cooperation with Scania (truck manufacturers) in Södertälje.

Formal verification of distributed avionics architecture

Contact: Simin Nadjm-Tehrani

In an earlier study of a distributed version of the flight control system for JAS39 Gripen [Forsberg et.al 2004, Forsberg et.al. 2005] the problem of discrete mode changes in presence of various combinations of faults in the system has been studied. The basic idea has been to show that 7 independent controllers behave as one by adjusting their control mechanism in response to any single permanent fault and combination of a permanent fault and any transient faults.

The analysis in those reports has an informal nature and relies on case based reasoning in combination with the domain knowledge about the application and the architecture. In this proposal for Masters thesis we would like to study the same problem, this time using a rigorous mathematical model, thereby turning the proof sketch in the earlier papers to a well documented set of formal assumptions and proofs. To this end, a modelling tool that is well-suited for modelling time-triggered avionics systems (the tool SCADE by Esterel Technologies) together with the built-in proof engines is to be used. The modelling effort should produce a problem description (pattern) that is possible to instantiate or adapt to similar studies e.g. within automotive applications.

A candidate with a background in the computer science or computer engineering programs (C or D programs) or equivalent degrees will be preferred.

For more information, please contact Simin Nadjm-Tehrani.