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Technische Universität München

Advanced Seminar Embedded Systems and Internet of Things

Application Process

All topics for WS20/21 have been assigned.

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(at)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 22.10.2020. 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 will be conducted as an online class. You will have weekly meetings with your supervisor via Zoom while lecture materials and videos will be available on Moodle.

The kick-off meeting will be on the 4th of November at 9:45 on Zoom. 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 11 topics for the advanced seminar "Embedded Systems and Internet of Things":

  1. Hypermedia: Not a Term from Star Trek
  2. Automated Run-Time Reliability Analysis of Distributed Systems
  3. Timing of the Internet: Synchronization Errors and Delays
  4. Learn to Prove: Evaluation of Formal Proofs in Distributed Systems
  5. The Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem
  6. Blockchain in Manufacturing Systems
  7. Secure IP/Ethernet-Based In-Vehicle Communication
  8. The Selection of Intrusion Response Strategies
  9. Security Problem in the Next Generation of Ethernet (IEEE 802.1 Time Sensitive Networking)
  10. Enrypted Backup Recovery Techniques
  11. Comparison of Cryptographic File Systems

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. Hypermedia: Not a Term from Star Trek

In this topic, the student is expected to evaluate different hypermedia-based agent approaches. Therefore, first it is necessary to develop a good understanding of what hypermedia means and then to present how different approaches can be used in the context of building IoT device mashups, i.e. systems of devices doing a joint task. Previous experience with the Web of Things, REST (APIs) or multi agent systems is appreciated. In addition to the references listed below, diving into (reputable) blog posts and Stack Overflow threads are highly encouraged.

References:

Supervisor: Ege Korkan

Assigned

2. Automated Run-Time Reliability Analysis of Distributed Systems

Fail-operational systems are essential to enable autonomously driving vehicles. However, to enable a dynamic and safe system behaviour (e.g. to allow frequent software updates) it is necessary to evaluate new system configurations at run-time. Here, it is important to quantify the reliability of safety-critical software to find feasible software configurations. Most related work focuses on optimizing the system by conducting a reliability analysis at design-time. By contrast, only limited resources would be available to conduct a reliability analysis at run-time. Thus, the goal of this topic is to generate an overview over reliability analysis techniques to quantify the reliability of distributed embedded systems. Here, you should evaluate the suitability of the given design-time approaches for a run-time evaluation e.g. based on their scalability, algorithm runtime, accuracy, memory usage and complexity. Optimally, you are able to find existing run-time approaches or to identify possible candidates for a run-time evaluation.

References:

Supervisor: Philipp Weiß

Assigned

3. Timing of the Internet: Synchronization Errors and Delays

What are typical ranges of delays for TCP packets and when is a packet too late for the party? Can we detect synchronization erros and how? These questions are relevant for IoT application in order to agree on a global reference time. For this topic, you should find and summarize statistics on typical synchronization errors between local clocks and the range in which transmission times vary. From your findings you should develop a probabilistic model (equation) that can answer the question: What is the maximum expected delay for 90% of the packets?

References:

Supervisor: Emanuel Regnath

Assigned

4. Learn to Prove: Evaluation of Formal Proofs in Distributed Systems

A mathematical proof is a strong statement and you can create one too. As electrical engineer you only get the basics of math but in this seminar I invite you to explore and learn more about the techniques used in formal proofs for distributed systems based on the two examples from the references. It is not required that you understand all the details. Your task is to explore the proofs in a structured way, trying to understand the main elements and mechanisms of these proofs and give an overview and explanations in your report. Also share your insights what makes a proof difficult to write and to read.

References:

Supervisor: Emanuel Regnath

Assigned

5. The Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem

The Flexible Job Schop Scheduling (FJSS) Problem extends the regular Job Shop Scheduling Problem ("Schedule a sequence of tasks, which must be processed on specific machines.") by allowing more than one machine to perform a specific task. There are many solutions to this problem that address different flavors, such as fuzzy processing time. These solutions use different algorithms, such as "Artificial Bee Colony Algorithms", "Genetic Algorithms", or "Tabu Search". Your task is to review recent publications about the specific flavors of the FJSS problem and the used algorithms. This may include the following steps:

  • Gather publications on solutions to the FJSS problem
  • Analyze the problem descriptions and proposed algorithms
  • Compare the publications and relate them to each other

References:

Supervisor: Laurin Prenzel

Assigned

6. Blockchain in Manufacturing Systems

Blockchain technology is still a solution looking for a problem. There are a multitude of publications, proposing frameworks how this technology may be used and applied. Your task is to review recent publications on the intersection between Blockchain and Manufacturing Systems, summarize their approaches, and identify future research directions.

  • Find a valid search string and gather recent publications on Blockchain and Manufacturing Systems
  • Analyze the publications and summarize their findings
  • Compare the publications, find similarities and differences for future research directions

References:

Supervisor: Laurin Prenzel

Assigned

7. Secure IP/Ethernet-Based In-Vehicle Communication

The emerging requirements of automotive applications to exchange bigger and more expressive messages are increasingly pushing towards the necessity to adopt a more efficient communication bus for both in-vehicle and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. Many researchers believe that the IP/Ethernet will be the desired communication system that will replace other in-vehicle bus systems shortly. IP/Ethernet brings real opportunities to improve the security of in-vehicle  V2X communications by benefiting from the significant security expertise gained during the many years of using IP/Ethernet for traditional IT systems. Protocols such as (D)TLS, IPsec, MACsec, etc. have been used to secure the communication of many domains. One of these domains is automotive communication. Your task  in this seminar is to:

  • Survey papers which presented these security protocols (and other protocols as well)  and understand how they were implemented or simulated. 
  • Compare the performance evaluation of those protocols and discuss each one of them's advantages and disadvantages. 

References:

Supervisor: Mohammad Hamad

Assigned

8. The Selection of Intrusion Response Strategies

In safety-critical systems, the reaction to the cyber attack is as critical as its detection.  Therefore,  the need for having a comprehensive Intrusion Response System (IRS) becomes one essential requirement to ensure system security. One of the main challenges to design an efficient IRS is determining how the IRS should react to an attack and which response strategy should it choose and apply. Your task  in this seminar is to:

  • Survey the recent papers which present solutions for this issue and understand their proposed methodologies
  • Compare these methods based on the required resources, complexity, performance, stability of the system after applying the selected response, etc. 

References:

Supervisor: Mohammad Hamad

Assigned

9. Security Problem in the Next Generation of Ethernet (IEEE 802.1 Time Sensitive Networking)

IEEE 802.1 Time Sensitive Networking (layer 2) is the most promising solution to provide real-time aspects, reduce complexity and enhance the bandwidth for the next generation networks in the domain of automotive, industrial automation, avionics and aerospace. However, the flexibility features in manipulation of network configuration at runtime via configuration agent (CA, IEEE 802.1Qcc) increase the vulnerability of the infrastructure and safety critcal functions. Thus security study has become one of the major objectives for the development of TSN technologies. The objective of this topic is to the survey of exsiting mitigation techniques (security measures) proposed for the TSN network, then to give an overall framework of preventing DoS attack for example initiated through CA for TSN.

References:

Supervisor: Luxi Zhao

Assigned

10. Enrypted Backup Recovery Techniques

Managing credentials in wallets is a common pattern in user-centric identity management systems. It is often the case, that if wallets get lost (device breaks, stolen smart phone, etc), it is not possible to reconstruct the credentials of the wallet. To solve the issue, the work of Mir et al. (Reference 1) propose a technique to recover information of encrypted backups from partially trusted cloud servers with feasible usability requirements. Your task in this seminar is to describe/summarize the key recovery approach of the work of Mir et al. (Reference 1) and compare it to related solutions.

References:

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Assigned

11. Comparison of Cryptographic File Systems

Cryptographic file systems enable to associate a password to a secure directory which can be used to store credentials. The work of Blaze (Reference 1) has pushed cryptographic file systems to the operating system level to secure storage at the system level, to remain independent of the file system of the underlying storage, and to stay away from vulnerabilities that affect user level encryption tools. This work encouraged related research to improve on the newly introduced concepts. Your task is the compare simple old as well as latest cryptographic file systems based on common properties.

References:

Supervisor: Jan Lauinger

Assigned

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