Topic Selection Howto
Mihail L. Sichitiu

This page is meant to help new students on selecting a research topic.

There are several aspects you should keep in mind when you choose a research topic:

• It should be in the WALAN scope (if it isn't, you're on the wrong website :-).
• It should be appealing to you. If you'll work hard doing research for several years, you might as well enjoy it. If you hate the research topic you'll likely end up hating research in general. It would be a waste of time and energy (yours and mine).
• Should be relevant. If nobody cares about it, it's not worth the effort (and will be impossible to publish the results). It will also hurt you when you try to get a job after you graduate (either in the industry or in the academia).
• It helps if it's a relatively new topic: well established systems that work at 99.8% efficiency are extremely hard to improve (and probably not worth the effort). In contrast, new systems (e.g., ad-hoc networks ;-) work many times at 10%-20% efficiency, and hence it can be (relatively easily) improved.

This being said there are a few ways to select a research topic:

• You might be supported by a research project. In this case, although it is not required it is highly recommended that you select your thesis research area the same as the research area of the project.
• If you are not supported by a research project you have several options:
  • You may already have a topic in mind: you encountered the problem while working in the industry, or during your BS and you're determined to solve it during your MS or PhD.
  • Your adviser may suggest you a topic (he/she might have a list of topics waiting for just the right student).
  • You start by looking at the good conferences in the area of your interest. Have a look at the titles of the papers. Browse through the abstracts. See if anything catches your attention. If you don't see anything interesting, maybe it's just not your area. Ideally you should see a problem that sounds exciting to you. Have a look at the solution proposed in the paper (or even better, a brief literature review.) Do you think that you can do better? Great! You got your topic. Otherwise, repeat until success.

    Here is an (incomplete) list of major conferences in the WALAN research area:

    • IEEE INFOCOM (The Conference on Computer Communications).
    • ACM Mobicom (The ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking).
    • ACM Mobihoc (The ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing).
    • ACM Mobisys (The International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services).
    • ACM SenSys (The ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems).
    • IEEE WCNC (The IEEE Wireless and Communications and Networking Conference).
    • IEEE ICC (The IEEE Conference on Communications).
    • IEEE Globecom (The IEEE Global Communication Conference).
    • IEEE VTC (IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference).
    • IEEE MASS (The IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems).
    • IEEE SECON (The IEEE Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks).