Information for Senior Projects EE 496

by and for Galen Sasaki

Date: 4/30/99

If you are interested in doing a senior project (e.g., EE 496) with me, read the following, and take heed to the instructions.

Fun Facts About Senior Project Course EE 496

This is the capstone design course of your undergraduate career. You will be able to showcase your design skills that you have developed and honed over the years.
You should have a faculty advisor, who you should meet with periodically. However, there are no lectures.
This is a writing intensive course, so you can get WI credits. This means that you must accomplish significant writing assignments. See below for more details.
The course has an oral communication requirement where you must present your design to your advisor. This can be a demonstration or could be a more formal presentation with overhead transparencies, etc.

Instructions

If you are thinking about doing an EE 496 with me during Semester X then follow the instructions below:

Step 1. When: During the semester before Semester X and before preregistration
Write a short Proposal (say 3-5 pages) about your intended project which should include
1. A short description of the project with motivation of why it is of interest to you.
2. A list of materials you will require and how you will get them.
3. A schedule of tasks you expect to accomplish, and the amount of time for each task.
4. A convincing explanation of how you will test your device.
5. A list of references that you need.
I will not supervise a Senior Project without this Proposal. This Proposal is worth 20% of your grade. You will be given a chance to revise it for a better grade (see Step 2).
Note that projects involving multiple students will still require a proposal from each participant. In addition, the proposals should be written to explain clearly what each member is responsible for, including individual tasks and deadlines.
Step 2. When: During preregistration of Semester X.
Meet with me during the registration period to sign up for the senior design projects course. During the meeting, we should discuss your Proposal, make a preliminary schedule of what you will accomplish, and decide on when we will meet at the beginning of next semester. I will give you a commented copy of your Proposal, and you are to revise your Proposal according to our discussion and my comments.
Step 3. When: First week of Semester X or earlier.
We meet and decide meeting times. Arrange for a meeting by telephone or email. You also turn in your revised Proposal. Remember that it is worth 20% of your grade.
Step 4. When: Midway of the semester.
We will meet and you are to turn in a 3 (or more) page Progress Report, which should include the following
- Introduction, including overview and objectives of project, motivation, and organization of report.
- What have you accomplished so far.
- What have you left to accomplish.
- What went wrong if anything, and what did you learn.
- What changes have you made to the project (e.g., parts, objectives, etc).
- References and citations.
This is worth 20% of your grade. We will also schedule your oral presentation, to be done at the end of the semester and will take 30 minutes. The oral presentation will be worth 25% of your grade.
Step 5. When: Two weeks before the last day of class.
Two weeks before the last day of class, you are to turn in a draft of your Final Report that should be (eventually) 16 pages. I will give you comments, and you incorporate the changes in your final draft. The final report is worth 35% of your grade.
Step 6. When: Last week of class.
Turn in your final draft of your senior design Project Report. Remember this is worth 35% of your grade. Also give your oral presentation.

Writing Intensive

Remember that a senior project course is a writing-intensive (WI) course. This means that you should write at least 4000 words (approximately 16 pages), not including drafts. The exact requirements for a WI course are stated in the Manoa Writing Program web site in the Student Information under Hallmarks of WI classes. By the way, at the MWP site you can find information about help with writing, etc.

75% of your grade will be based on your writing. The other 25% will be based on your oral presentation (e.g., final demonstration). Your writing assignments will be

A proposal for your projects (at least 3 pages). This is to be turned in at the beginning of the semester and counts for 20% of your total grade. I will provide comments for this report, and you will rewrite and resubmit it for your grade.
A progress report of your project (at least 3 pages). This is to be turned in midway through the semester. You should specify when you will be turning in your progress report in your proposal above. This counts for 20% of your total grade.
A final project report (at least 16 pages). I should receive a first draft of your thesis at least two weeks before your final draft, so that I can give you comments and you have time to incorporate them into your final draft. The written presentation of your final draft will count 35% of your total grade.

Possible Project Topics

Title: Implementation of an Ethernet card in Verilog
- Requirements: Knowledge of Verilog HDL and networking -- EE 449. An understanding of the packet format, and the Ethernet protocol are important. This will require background knowledge of the Internet. Note that books are available on the subject.
- Description: Model an Ethernet card using Verilog HDL. The code could be substantial requiring use of the College of Engineering's available CAD packages (e.g., Cadence).
Title: Implementation of a microcontroller chip in Verilog HDL:
- Requirements: Knowledge of Verilog HDL, and EE 361. Data sheets of the chip.
- Description: Implementation of a microcontroller chip, e.g., 6809-type or signal processing chips. A signifcant portion (if not all) of the instruction set is required, and also implementation of the interrupts. The code could be substantial requiring use of the College of Engineering's available CAD packages (e.g., Cadence).
Title: Course scheduler for the EE Department
- Requirements: Java and some background research with the personnel of the EE Department, e.g., Bernie. Also, some algorithm experience would be helpful.
- Description: The project is to develop a user friendly software that will schedule courses for the Department. It should have a graphical user interface (GUI), and on-line help. It should be simple to use such that anyone in the EE office can use with very little or no training.
Title: MIPS processor simulator -- alternative to xspim
- Requirements: EE 361.
- Description: The project is to build a cursor-based simulator so that users can run it using telnet. It should have all the important features found on xspim including breakpoints, single step, disassembly, and IO features. It will be an educational tool for EE 361 students as an alternative to xspim. Some research will be needed to determine exactly what and how features will be implemented.
Title: MIPS processor simulator -- visualization
- Requirements: EE 361 and java
- Description: The project is to write simulators for the single-cycle and multi-cycle processors given in the EE 361 textbook. The simulators should show all the data values in registers, outputs of ALUs, etc. Chris Chan has a version of this which he did for his EE 496 in Spring 99 under the supervision of D. Summerville. Click here to get to the project. It may not work on your Netscape browser, but it should work on the Explorer browser.
Title: Verilog implementation of MIPS processor
- Requirements: EE 361 and Verilog HDL
- Description: The project is to write a synthesizable verilog HDL code for a pipelined MIPS processor. For more details click here

All of the above topics will require a semester's worth of time to do the planning and background research. This is in addition to the semester when the project will implemented.