Sample project and thesis topics: (this is only a sample, you are not restricted to working on these topics) 0. Buidling a faster Martian Robot, based on our Robots: http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/events/05/rtss_competition.pml http://robot.unipv.it/cyberrescue-RTSS09/?content=teams 1. Real-Time Scheduling of Heterogeneous Multiprocessors H. Chen and A. M. K. Cheng ``Applying Ant Colony Optimization to the Partitioned Scheduling Problem for Heterogeneous Processors,'' Proc. IEEE-CS Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium WIP Session, San Francisco, March 2005. Also as invited paper, ACM Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems (SIGBED) Review, Volume 2, Number 2, April 2005. Also see: http://www.utdallas.edu/~edsha/ http://www.cs.unc.edu/~anderson/papers.html 2. Reseach directions given in section 7 of: Ming Zu and Albert M. K. Cheng, ``Real-Time Scheduling of Hierarchical Reward-Based Tasks,'' Proc. IEEE-CS Real-Time Technology and Applications Symp., May 2003. 3. Apply fault tolerance techniques to EQL, C, C++, Ada, or Java programs with timing constraints. See M. Demirbas and A. Arora. Convergence refinement. Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Distributed Systems (ICDCS 2002), Vienna, Austria, 589-597. 2002. A. Arora, M. Demirbas and S. Kulkarni. Graybox stabilization. International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'2001), Goteborg, Sweden, July 2001. http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/siefast/group/publications.html 4. Using ideas from chapter 12 of the textbook, develop timing optimization strategies for C, C++, Ada, or Java programs. 5. Develop more accurate worst-case execution time (WCET) prediction for C, C++, or Java programs running in a specific architecture with a specific OS. See http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/rts/papers.php 6. Develop algorithms for routing, connection, and security with timing constraints guarantee for wireless ad hoc networks. See Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2005 http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~reiter/papers/ http://www.monarch.cs.rice.edu/papers.html http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/nsl/faculty/radha/ 7. Apply self-stabilizing techniques (non-masking fault tolerance) used in these 2 papers (available from the library IEEE-CD) A. M. K. Cheng, ``Self-Stabilizing Real-Time Rule-Based Systems,'' 11th IEEE-CS Symp. on Reliable Distributed Systems, Houston, Texas, pp. 172-179, Oct. 1992, and A. M. K. Cheng and S. Fujii, ``Bounded-Response-Time Self-Stabilizing OPS5 Production Systems,'' Proc. IEEE-CS Intl. Parallel and Distributed Processing Symp., Cancun, Mexico, 2000 in C, C++, or Java programs. Also, see A. M. K. Cheng and S. Fang, ``Study and Simulation of a Distributed Real-Time Fault-Tolerance Web Monitoring System,'' Technical Report UH-CS-05-20, August 2005. 8. Develop more efficient model checking algorithms. See the ideas on symmetry and partial order reduction: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/emerson/publications.html 9. Design and analysis of networked embedded/real-time systems such as a network of sensors or surveillance units to acomplish an overall task of threat monitoring. See IEEE Computer Sept. 2002 issue. 10.Use of expert systems, fuzzy-logic, neural networks, and other techniques to detect threats and track persons, cars, objects, etc. in a network of sensor/cameras. See G. T. Kogut and M. M. Trivedi, ``Real-Time Wide Area Tracking: Hardware and Software Infrastructure,'' Proc. 5th IEEE Intl. Conf. On Intelligent Transportation Systems, Singapore, Sept. 2002. 11.Compressing BDDs to yield smaller size! https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/servlet/showaward?award=9986308 12.More model checking and verification: https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/servlet/showaward?award=9988884 https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/servlet/showaward?award=9734115 http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/papers/index.html 13.Sensor networks http://dl.comsoc.org/cocoon/comsoc/servlet-ServeOntology#selected http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/homes/zaher/publications.html http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/nsl/faculty/radha/ 14.Develop a conversion methodology and tool to specify systems in an industrial/commercial domain efficiently as a finite-state system, which can then be analyzed by an existing model checker to determine if it is a model of specified properties expressed in CTL and some logic. See, for example, Nina Amla, E. Allen Emerson and Kedar S. Namjoshi. Efficient Decompositional Model Checking for Regular Timing Diagrams. CHARME 1999: Pages 67-81. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/emerson/publications.html 15.WWW research: extend the work in UH-CS-05-20 (download from pre-prints in our CS website) STUDY AND SIMULATION OF A DISTRIBUTED REAL-TIME FAULT-TOLERANCE WEB MONITORING SYSTEM, Albert M. K. Cheng, Shaohong Fang, August 29, 2005 16.Power-Aware Computing Y. Wang and A. M. K. Cheng, ``A Dynamic-Mode DVS Algorithm under Dynamic Workloads,'' Proc. IEEE-CS Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium WIP Session, San Francisco, March 2005. Also as invited paper, ACM Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems (SIGBED) Review, Volume 2, Number 2, April 2005. 17.Modular Verification and Debugging of Real-Time System Components S. Andrei, W.-N. Chin, A. M. K. Cheng, and M. Lupu, ``Incremental Automatic Debugging of Real-Time Systems Based on Satisfiability Counting,'' IEEE-CS Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, San Francisco, March 2005. 18.Security in real-time/embedded systems, sensors, and networks http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2006/nsf06517/nsf06517.htm http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~reiter/papers/ http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/homes/zaher/publications.html 19.Real-Time Java and Garbage Collection http://www.cs.purdue.edu Prof. Jan Vitek's papers