Writing your

problem statement
 What should be in your problem statement?

● Status quo - what is current state of affairs? [SQ]

● Destabilizing condition - why is the current state
unacceptable or insufficient? What will be the costs if we
don't address the status quo? [DC]
● What are the top (1-3) candidate approaches, and why
aren't/weren't these enough to solve the problem? [C]
● What is your suggested solution (formulated as a
hypothesis)? [H] Are you sure this hasn't been done yet?
How is this different? [D]
● What specific benefit might arise if your solution works? [B]
 Hypothetical example 1
● [SQ] Broadband penetration rates in economically-
disadvantaged communities remain poor, as ISPs and
telcos remain reluctant to invest infrastructure with
potentially poor returns
● [DC] This situation worsens the knowledge and economic
gap between those with and without access
● [C1] Approaches such as broadband satellite-based
Internet access, while offering flexible and rapid
deployment, also require large infrastructure investment
and capital costs
● [C2] Rolling out a WiFi based mesh also requires new
infrastructure to be rolled out and managed
 Hypothetical example 1
●

● [S] TV broadcast coverage, however, is ubiquitous, so a broadband

access scheme that can be integrated with TV broadcasting and TV
receivers offers a potential solution. [H] Our hypothesis is that the use
of cognitive radio techniques to dynamically sense available channels
will not only offer high-bandwidth dynamic spectrum reuse, but also
provide a solution to the problem of multiple access. In addition, we
propose to use mesh techniques to reduce the transmission power
needed from the subscriber side
● [D] To our knowledge, the application of cognitive radio techniques,
specifically to provide multiple access in the TV spectrum, has not
been demonstrated in the literature. In addition, this has not been
combined with wireless mesh techniques to enable low-power / low-
interference transmissions on the subscriber side
● [B] If this technology can be integrated into commodity TV receivers
and into TV broadcasting infrastructure, the problem of broadband
penetration may be addressed in a significant way
Example 2 - SQ starts with more specific / technical
issue
● [SQ] Less-than-best effort congestion control techniques
such as LEDBAT have proven useful for bandwidth
scavenging applications in wired networks. Thus, they may
also be potentially useful for bandwidth scavenging in
community wireless mesh networks
● [DC] However, the impact of bit errors, interference,
access point contention, and packet loss not related
congestion on LBE is not well known. It is possible that
these may result in poor throughput even in non-
congested scenarios
● [C1] While some simulation results for simple topologies
have been presented in the literature, these results do not
sufficiently model more extensive and complex community
mesh networks
Hypothetical example 2 - SQ starts with more specific
/ technical issue

● [C2] Furthermore, there is no comprehensive evaluation of

all of the available LBE protocols on a common testbed,
and thus it is difficult to have a uniform basis for
comparison
● [S] Our solution is to fully characterize these LBE
techniques in more realistic mesh scenarios, using both
simulation and live testbeds, and testing various protocol
mixes. [H] Our hypothesis is that LBEs X and Y will be
more robust to wireless errors but prove to be less fair to
standard protocols such as TCP.
● [B] The results we expect to gather from these tests will
enable designers to make better choices for bandwidth
scavenging applications in wireless networks
Research objectives
 Research objectives - checklist of
things I need to show / prove
● Show that TV spectrum has enough whitespace or unused channels
● Show that spectrum sensing can be done accurately / efficiently /
quickly in these bands
● (Hmm, what are my metrics? I should define them. That could also
be a side objective, but ideally you should have done that by
now)
● What techniques are currently in use? Where are they applicable?
● Demonstrate that cognitive radio techniques may be used for multiple
access
● Metrics - utilization, throughput, etc..
● Prove that cognitive radio techniques can offer better downlink
capacity because they can better adapt to channel conditions
● Determine whether mesh topology (vs centralized) will result in lower
interference and simpler design on the subscriber side