NANYANG TECHNOLOCAL UNIVERSITY

School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Guidelines for MSc Dissertations

FORMAT
1. The dissertation should be typewritten in English, in the third person and with one and a half or
double spacing between lines. There is no prescribed length to the dissertation; however a good
guide would be around 60 to 100 pages printed in font size 12, preferably printed double sided. You
are strongly encouraged to use your own words instead of copying directly from books, technical
reports, etc. The Standard International Units (SI) should be used.
2. White A-4 size bond paper of at least 80 g wt should be used.
3. The margin on the left-hand side must be about 3.5 cm. On the top, bottom and right hand side, a
margin of 3 cm is recommended.
4. The same type setting should be used in the main text of the report to ensure that the letters do not
vary in size, type and shade. One and a half line spacing should be used for the text of the report.
Below is the summary table:
Component

Assessor

Page

White A4 size bond paper of at least 80 g/m2

Text

Times New Roman, size: 12

Margins

3.5cm margin on the left hand side and 3cm on the top, bottom and right hand
sides of each page

Typing

The same font and pitch for the whole report except when highlighting important
matters

Spacing

One-and-a-half line spacing

Length

60 to 100 printed pages, preferably printed double sided.

5. The contents of the report should be presented in the following order:

(1) Title page
(2) Table of contents
(3) Abstract
(4) Acknowledgment page to give recognition of any advisory or financial assistance received in
the course of the work on which the report is based (optional)
(5) Acronyms (optional)
(6) Symbols (optional)
(7) List of figures
(8) List of tables
(9) Introductory chapter
(10) Text chapters
(11) References
(12) Appendix/appendices (optional)
Click here for the dissertation template file.
6. Two copies of the soft-bound (ring-bound) dissertation, together with a completed dissertation
submission form, declaration form, student data form and one CD ROM consists of the soft-copy of
the dissertation (in pdf format), Originality Report (in HTML format), should be submitted for
examination through your supervisor. The above-mentioned forms are available at our intranet.

7. After the dissertation has been examined and approved, one copy of the hardbound dissertation with
necessary amendment and one CD ROM which contains the final version of the dissertation (one file,
either in MS Words or PDF format) should be submitted to the school. The Student Name and
Dissertation Title should clearly indicate on the CD ROM. The hardcover binding should be
standardized. A dark blue hard cover is required. If in doubt, please ask your supervisor for a sample
of past hard bound dissertation.
8. Samples of the cover and spine, title page and Dissertation format, as well as an extract on the
method of listing references, are attached in Appendices 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

STANDARD OF WRITING
The dissertation should be logically laid out. The writing should be in grammatically correct, clear and
concise English. There are many books in the NTU library, providing guidance on writing technical
reports.
Any attempt to provide guidance or feature common errors here will run into many pages. So we will
refrain from doing that except to say one thing: if a word (or phrase or sentence) can be deleted without
changing the meaning of what you want to say, then delete it.
All figures and tables should be numbered sequentially, chapter by chapter, and be given a caption. Each
must be referred to in the main text, and wherever possible appear near to where it is referred to.

CONTENTS
First and foremost, the contents of your work must be relevant to the MSc Program you are pursuing.
Rather than the actual contents, which will vary from dissertation to dissertation and from program to
program, this section describes the general areas, which a dissertation should address. While these areas
are not necessarily universal, i.e., common to all dissertations, they are more the norm than the
exception. The sample Contents page in Appendix 3 gives a pretty good summary on these areas.

1. The Abstract should be a short and concise passage on the important work and contributions of the
project: the motivation and the problem pursued, the method you employed and the results obtained,
highlighting the significant achievements. It should not contain peripheral things like summary of
literature review, and it is not good enough to say that a certain issue has been studied without stating
the results of the study. Generally, one page is about the right length for the Abstract.
2. The first chapter of the dissertation is almost invariably the Introduction. Generally, its purpose is to
lead the readers into the problem you intend to attack in the project, to set the scene. The main points
here consist of the background to the problem and your motivation in solving it. This then leads into
the objectives and the scope of the project. It is good to conclude your Introduction with a section on
the layout of the dissertation. It prepares the readers for what is to come.
3. Then comes the main part of your work. To lay the ground, there should first be a chapter on what
has been done before on the problem - a Literature Review. This is an important section because it
shows that you do not narrowly focus only on what you do, but are aware of the related work
elsewhere, some of which might be instructive to your solving the problem. It can also explain why
you are taking the direction you do.
4. The next few chapters should describe the work you have done in tackling the problem. There might
be a chapter on the fundamental theories relevant to the solution you are pursuing, or the supporting
technologies you need in implementing the solution. Then there should be a chapter on the solution
itself, followed by a chapter on the results and analysis of the results.
5. The last chapter is always the Conclusion. This generally should have three parts. The first is a
concise summary of the work you have done. In a way, this is similar to the abstract. Then there is the
conclusion, in which you highlight the significance of the results, and perhaps the consequences of
the results, critically where necessary. The last thing is usually recommendations and/or future work,
in which you identify the inadequacies of what you have done, and suggest how the gaps may be
plugged.
ii

6. Generally, there should be no more than six or seven chapters in your dissertation. If you have more
than that, you should take a close look at its orgainsation and see if certain chapters can be merged.

SUPPLEMENTARY ELEMENTS
1. Documents that are prepared with the help of other sources should have a list of sources cited. A list
of References contains only sources the writer quotes directly, takes original ideas from, and refers
to in the dissertation should be included. In reports where the subject is primarily scientific, the list of
references is the most widely accepted way to cite specific sources.
2. The Appendix contains related data not necessary to the immediate understanding of the discussion
in the report. This may contain materials such as: tables, graphs, illustrations, description of
equipment, samples of forms, data sheets, questionnaires, equations, and any material that must
be included for record purposes.
Each entry (sample forms, detailed data for references, tables, pictures, questionnaires, charts, maps,
graphic representations) in the appendix requires an identifying title. Every entry in the appendix
must be referred to in the body of the report. Each appendix must be lettered, beginning with
Appendix A. The list of appendices should be appearing in the table of contents following the list of
references entry.

REFERENCES
[1] Blake G. and Bly R.W., The Elements of Technical Writing, MacMillan, 1993.
[2] Blicq R. S., Technically-Write, Prentice-Hall, 1992.
[3] Turk C. and Kirkman J., Effective Writing, E & FN Spon, 1989.
[4] IEEE guideline

iii

Appendix 1: SAMPLE of COVER

ENHANCING PLAY-OUT PERFORMANCE

FOR
INTERNET VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS

ZHANG SAN
SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING
201X
(Submission year)
iv

Appendix 2: SAMPLE TITLE PAGE

ENHANCING PLAY-OUT PERFORMANCE

FOR
INTERNET VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS

ZHANG SAN

SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN XXX

201X
v

Appendix 3: DISSERTATION FORMAT

Table of Contents
Page
i

Abstract
Acknowledgement (optional)

ii

Acronyms (optional)

iii

Symbols (optional)

iv

Lists of Figures

List of Tables

vi

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1

Background

1.2

Motivation

1.3

Objectives and Specifications

1.4

Major contribution of the Dissertation

1.5

Organisation of the Dissertation

Chapter 2

Literature Review

2.1

Prior Art

2.2

XXX

Chapter 3

(Actual work done and contribution, including literature survey)

3.1

XXX

3.2

XXX

Layout Implementation and Verification

Simulation Results and Measurement

.
.
Chapter 6

Conclusion and Recommendations

6.1

Conclusion

6.2

Recommendations for further research

References
Appendix A (optional)
Appendix B (optional)

vi

Abstract
Multihop cellular networks (MCNs) incorporate wireless ad hoc networking into traditional
single-hop cellular networks (SCNs) and thus they enjoy the flexibility of ad hoc networks,
while preserving the benefit of using infrastructure of SCNs. In this Thesis, we study the
resource allocation problems in MCNs.

Xxxx

vii

Acknowledgements (optional)
First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and great gratitude to my parents.

Xxx Xxx
November 2010

viii

Acronyms (optional)
2G
3G
ACA
AP
ARS
ASP
ATDMA
BS
CAMA
CBM
CDD
D-PRMA
DA
DCA

Second Generation
Third Generation
Adaptive Channel Assignment
Access Point
Ad-hoc Relaying Station
Adaptive Switching Point
Advanced Time Division Multiple Access
Base Station
Cellular Aided Mobile Ad-hoc Network
Cellular Based Multihop Systems
Code-Division Duplexing
Distributed PRMA
Demand Assignment
Dynamic Channel Assignment

ix

Symbols (optional)
B
C

d
D
Da
Did
Dmax
Dpc

channel bandwidth in Hz
channel capacity in bps;
number of collisions in time slot t
distance
minimum reuse distance
average message access delay
inter-datagram-arrival time
maximum tolerable delay for voice packets
reading time between two consecutive packet call requests

List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Proposed CMCN architecture...

10

Figure 1.2: TDD-CDMA MCNs with fixed RSs

13

Figure 2.1: Illustration of FDMA, TDMA and CDMA... 16

Figure 2.2: Near-far effect in CDMA cellular systems...

21

Figure 2.3: Illustration of channel borrowing schemes...

25

Figure 2.4: Structure of reuse partitioning..

26

Figure 2.5: Classifications of medium access control protocols.

36

Figure 2.6: Frame structure of PRMA. 39

Figure 2.7: Frame structure of PRMA++

43

List of Tables
Table 2-1: ACO matrix at BS i..

30

Table 2-1: Comparison of selected MCN architectures.

74

Table 2-1: Call blocking with different (N0, N1) combinations at =5 Erlangs

103

Table 4-2: System capacity for uplink and downlink vs. channel combinations...

107

Table 5-1: Interference Information Table for uplink

113

Table 5-2: Interference Constraint Table for the simulated network.

113

Table 5-3: Packing-based Channel Searching for uplink...

116

Table 6-1: System parameters for TDD CDMA systems...

139

Table 6-2: Supported number of simultaneous voice users 146

Table A-1: Example of uplink call combinations for state (8,2,1,2,1,3,2).

164

Table B-1: Example of downlink call combinations for state (24,2,1,2,1,3,2)..

168

Chapter 1
Introduction
This chapter ..

1.1 Motivations
This thesis deals with the problem of the blind multiuser detection for DS-CDMA

1.2 Objectives and Scope

The communication channel considered in this thesis is assumed to be slow timevarying,
...

1.3 Organisations

Chapter 2
Literature Review
2.1 xxx

2.2 xxx

Chapter 3
xxxx
3.1 xxx

3.2 xxx

Chapter 6
Conclusions and Future Work
6.1 Conclusions

6.2 Recommendation in Future Work

References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]

[10]
[11]
[12]

[13]
[14]

R. Jordan and C. T. Abdallah, "Wireless communications and networking: An overview,"

IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol. 44, pp. 185-193, February, 2002.
J. E. Padgett, C. G. Gunther, and T. Hattori, "Overview of wireless personal
communications," IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 33, pp. 28-41, January, 1995.
G. L. Stuber, Principles of Mobile Communication, 1st ed. New York: Springer, 1996.
GSM Association, "Worldwide cellular connections exceeds 2 billion,"
http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2005/press05_21.shtml, 2005.
The Portio Research Limited, Worldwide Mobile Market Forecasts 2006-2011, 1st ed.
Market Study, UK, 2006.
P. Chaudhury, W. Mohr, and S. Onoe, "The 3GPP proposal for IMT-2000," IEEE
Communications Magazine, vol. 37, pp. 72-81, December, 1999.
A. Urie, M. Streeton, and C. Mourot, "An advanced TDMA mobile access system for
UMTS," IEEE Personal Communications, vol. 2, pp. 38-47, February, 1995.
H. Holma and A. Toskala, WCDMA for UMTS: Radio Access for Third Generation
Mobile Communications, 3rd ed. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
H. H. Chen, C. X. Fan, and W. W. Lu, "China's perspectives on 3G mobile
communications and beyond: TD-SCDMA technology," IEEE Wireless Communications,
vol. 9, pp. 48-59, April, 2002.
C. E. Perkins, Ad Hoc Networking, 1st ed. Boston MA, USA: Addison-Wesley, 2001.
C.-Y. Chong and S. P. Kumar, "Sensor networks: Evolution, opportunities, and
challenges," Proceedings of The IEEE vol. 91, pp. 1247-1256, August, 2003.
A. Bria, F. Gessler, O. Queseth, R. Stridh, M. Unbehaun, J. Wu, J. Zander, and M.
Flament, "4th-generation wireless infrastructures: Scenarios and research challenges,"
IEEE Personal Communications, vol. 8, pp. 25-31, December, 2001.
S. Y. Hui and K. H. Yeung, "Challenges in the migration to 4G mobile systems," IEEE
Communications Magazine, vol. 41, pp. 54-59, December, 2003.
A. K. Salkintzis, "Interworking techniques and architectures for WLAN/3G integration
toward 4G mobile data networks," IEEE Wireless Communications, vol. 11, pp. 50-61,
June, 2004.

Appendix (optional)

Appendix 4: SAMPLE OF HARD BOUND DISSERTATIONS COVER AND TITLE PAGE