Advanced Seminar Embedded Systems and Internet of Things

Application Process

Due to the high interest in our seminar topics we use an application process to assign the topics.

If you are interested in one of the topics below, please send your application together with your CV and your transcript of records to seminar.esi.ei@tum.de. Express your interest and explain why you want to have that specific topic and why you think that you are most suitable for the topic. This allows us to choose the most suitable candidate for the desired topic to maximize the seminar's learning outcome and to avoid dropouts.

Additionally, you can indicate a second topic that you would like to take, such that we can still find a topic for you if your primary choice is not available.

Deadline: We encourage you to apply until the 19.04.2022. Afterwards we will assign the topics and notify all applicants. After this date, we will answer to requests within 3 days, assuming that there is enough motivation for the given topic. Once you are given the topic, we will ask for your confirmation.

Note: We do not assign topics on a first-come-first-served basis. Even though we appreciate your interest if you have asked or applied early for a topic we can not guarantee that you get a seat. Generally we have 3-4 applicants per topic. Please think carefully if you are able to do the work required as we have to reject other students. Generally, email clients remember the people you have communicated with.

Kick-off meeting

This semester the seminar may be conducted in physical mode depending on the situation. If physical mode is not possible then it will be conducted as an online class. You will have weekly meetings with your supervisor via Zoom or on campus while lecture materials and videos will be available on Moodle.

The kick-off meeting will be on the 27th of April at 9:45 on Campus. We ask all selected participants who have accepted a topic to be present in the kick-off meeting. Please notify us in case you can not make it to the meeting, otherwise we will assume that you are no longer interested and give your place to another applicant.

Topics

This semester we offer the following 8 topics for the advanced seminar "Embedded Systems and Internet of Things":

AI and ML use cases for 5G O-RAN
Scheduling in Cyclic Queueing and Forwarding
Investigating the attack surface of hardware wallets
Bridging data from off-chain IoT devices to on-chain smart contracts
Real-time Workloads in Virtual Environments: Containers & Hypervisors
Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation
Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) Protocols
5G-TSN bridge architecture

You will find the description of the topics below. Furthermore, we gave you a few references for each topic as a starting point for your research. Your task for each topic will be to read and analyze related literature, get an overview of the current state-of-the-art and summarize your findings in a paper-style report. Afterwards you will present your findings in a "mini-conference" in front of your fellow students.

During the seminar you will also learn through the lecture how to conduct the research, how to write a scientific paper and how to present your work.

1. AI and ML use cases for 5G O-RAN

In 5G mobile networks, the complexity of the Radio Access Networks(RAN) has increased dramatically. For example, in order to support different type of services, 5G supports multiple subcarrier spacing and utilizes novel techniques such as network slicing. Such techniques increase the complexity of resource allocation dramatically. Artificial intelligence(AI) is considered to have an important role managing this complexity to deliver the required quality of service(QoS).

To meet the challenges and opportunities of 5G RAN, the O-RAN Alliance was formed. Even though O-RAN has further responsibilities, we can focus on the fact that it provides an open source interface to implement AI/ML algorithms in 5G RAN.

In this seminar, you will identify the state-of-the-art papers on the machine learning use case in the 5G O-RAN domain and subsequently perform a survey.

References:

Supervisor: Selman Akinci

Assigned

2. Scheduling in Cyclic Queueing and Forwarding

Time-sensitive networking (TSN) is a set of standards which enables deterministic transmission on standard Ethernet. IEEE 802.1Qch sub-standard proposed Cyclic Queuing and Forwarding (CQF) based shaper that does not require pre-calculated scheduling tables unlike TAS. However, there is no scheduling algorithm available which can be directly applied to the CQF based Shaping mechanisms.

In this topic, the student has to find different scheduling algorithm for CQF from the literature. The student will focus on the current research work on CQF while comparing the different scheduling algorithms.

Your task for this topic is:

Propose different CQF scheduling algorithms and their comparison.
Investigate current state-of-the-art for CQF including challenges and advantages.
Investigate the performance of CQF compared to TAS.

References:

Supervisor: Rubi Debnath

Assigned

3. Investigating the attack surface of hardware wallets

Description: User-centric data management is of increasing importance in the Web 3.0 with IoT devices individually authenticating data or controls on behalf of users. For example, as soon as hardware wallets connect to devices with Internet connectivity, keys of hardware wallets can verify or sign data for asset or money transfer. In the scope of this seminar, the task of the student is investigate the attack surface of hardware wallets with Internet connectivity.

References:

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Assigned

4. Bridging data from off-chain IoT devices to on-chain smart contracts

Blockchains advance transaction-based sharing of IoT data feeds without relying on trusted third-party Internet services.

However, data sources cannot always be authenticated and bridging off-chain data to on-chain addresses requires decentralized resilient networks. In this scope, oracle networks are one solution to solve the issue. The task of the student is to investigate techniques which bridge off-chain IoT data feeds to on-chain smart contracts.

References:

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Assigned

5. Real-time Workloads in Virtual Environments: Containers & Hypervisors

Virtualization provides opportunities for a shift towards software-defined architectures that allow for higher utilization, as well as higher flexibility and resilience. For industrial systems, real-time workloads pose additional requirements, e.g. deterministic response times. These requirements were traditionally solved using dedicated devices with predictable (real-time) behaviors. Replacing these devices with containerized runtime environments can provide the aforementioned benefits, while also reducing cost and maintenance overhead. Yet, satisfying the critical real-time requirements becomes ever more challenging.

In this topic, you will:

Survey existing works on (hard) real-time container and hypervisor architectures.
Classify existing works with respect to the used technologies and given guarantees.
Summarize open challenges and research questions.

References:

Supervisor: Laurin Prenzel

Assigned

6. Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation

Distributed Key Generation enables a set of mutually distrustful parties to jointly generate a public/private keypair. While initially developed in the 1990s, distributed key generation gained much attention recently due to the rise of Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols. Interestingly, most protocols consider a synchronous network by assuming bounded communication delays to ensure their overall security.

For this topic, your task will be threefold:

Provide a concise motivation and analysis of why asynchronous key generation is needed.
Survey existing literature and provide an overview of protocols for synchronous and asynchronous key generation.
Compare current protocols for asynchronous key generation with regard to their application in BFT protocols.

References:

Supervisor: Jens Ernstberger

Assigned

7. Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) Protocols

Since the inception of Bitcoin, Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols have received much attention in recent years. However, the classical architecture of Bitcoin, which relies on a blockchain, incurs an overhead in transaction processing due to its sequential nature. DAG based BFT protocols improve on this notion by coupling network usage and transaction verification to increase the network throughput. In this topic, you should get familiar with current approaches to DAG based BFT and provide a comprehensive introduction to the differences between DAG based BFT protocols and classic blockchain architectures.

Therein, your task in this seminar is threefold:

Provide a contextualized history of advancements in DAG based consensus algorithms
Survey existing approaches to DAG based BFT and contrast their properties
Identify gaps and shortcomings of current DAG based BFT based protocols

References:

Supervisor: Jens Ernstberger

Assigned

8. 5G-TSN bridge architecture

With the growing demand of ultra-low latency communication, the research on 5G-TSN is currently a point of interest. 3GPP included the integration of the 5G system with IEEE 802.1 working group specifications covering Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) for the TSN-5G bridge architecture in their release 16 explaining the architecture of the two technologies which can be further used in industry, autonomous driving etc. In this topic the student will focus on the current research and standardization work on 5G-TSN integration architecture.

Your task for this topic is:

Investigate the different approaches and the current state-of-the-art to integrate TSN and 5G.
Survey of the TSN-5G hybrid architecture, challenges and performance.
Investigate the different tools used to evaluate the 5G-TSN integration.

References:

Supervisor: Rubi Debnath

Assigned