Computer Engineering Project Topics for the 21st Century

Computer engineering research drives innovation across hardware and software, shaping the technologies that power our modern world. From developing faster processors and efficient algorithms to advancing cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, these projects tackle complex challenges and push the boundaries of what’s possible.

We looked at some of the more recent computer engineering project topics relevant for research in several emerging areas in the field. As someone embarking on impactful computer science research you may look at some of these computer science project topics for inspiration as they have the potential to impact everyday life and improve/transform industries.

This article explores some of the most promising and impactful research projects in the field, highlighting their potential to transform industries and improve everyday life.

Here are a list of computer engineering project topics for the 21st century;

1. Design Control and Monitoring System of Water Distribution Networks

Nowadays, water distribution network automation is becoming more and more popular day by day due to its numerous advantages. An internet-based water distribution network system focuses on monitoring and controlling water distribution network instances.  Water distribution networks face wastage of water due to improper water supply management, non-monitoring in real time, this causes scarcity of water, scarcity of water considered mainly a problem in cities. water distribution network automation systems face four main problems: high cost of ownership, inflexibility, poor manageability, and difficulty in achieving security. See full research work.

2. Design and Implementation of a Two Way Authentication System Using Raspberry Pi

In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of applications based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems and have been successfully applied to different areas such as transportation, health, education, hospitality industry and many others. RFID technology facilitates automatic wireless identification using electronic passive and active tags with suitable readers. In this project, I dealt with solving the problem of theft in our inhabitants by locking the gate and the door using RFID technology. 

3. Design of Effectively Efficient Techniques for Circumvent Wireless Network Security Threats and Attacks

The rapid increase in computer, mobile applications and wireless networks has globally changed the features of network security. A series of Internet attacks and fraudulent acts on companies and individual networks have shown us that open computer networks have no immunity from intrusions. The traditional way of protecting computer networks, such as firewalls and software encryption are insufficient and ineffective. The wireless ad-hoc network is susceptible to physical attack or harm due to its feature of open medium dynamic changing topology, monitoring and management point not being centralized, clear line not well defended and cooperative algorithms.

4. Development of a Smart Energy Management System in a Community based Microgrid

In this work, an expert system for energy management in community based microgrids was developed. This was necessitated in a bid to address the inadequate power supply predominant in sub-Saharan African countries, while also addressing the problem of energy wastage that comes from individuals supplying their own energy demands. To achieve this, an architecture for a microgrid network was developed by adopting existing standards in the geographical region of interest. An energy management system (EMS) was developed using a modified waterfall model, along with algorithms for the home, sector and central controller units, to perform the energy management tasks within the microgrid. A fuzzy inference system was designed and used to develop an expert system for the control of the energy management system.

5. Analysis Of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) And Its Performance Enhancement Methods On Wireless Networks

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the dominant transport protocol in the Internet and supports many of the most popular Internet applications, such as the World Wide Web (WWW), file transfer and e-mail. The recently developed advanced wireless networks, such as GPRS, are known to cause delay spikes in packet transfer which causes unnecessary TCP retransmission timeouts. In order to find solutions to this effect, packet losses across wireless links should be distinguished from congestion related packet losses. This thesis concentrates on the analysis of two main strategies for enabling the TCP congestion control mechanism which determines the causes for packet losses.

6. Development Of An Arduino Based Cost Effective Smart Home Automation System

Nowadays, most of the conventional  home automation systems are designed for special purposes but this system proposes an all-in-one general purpose home automation system that can be easily implemented in new and existing homes. ‘The aim is to develop a reliable, compact, fast and low cost  smart home automation system, based on Arduino Uno (microcontroller). Various devices such as LEDs, DC Servo motors, and passive infrared sensors have been incorporated in the system to demonstrate the feasibility, reliability and quick operation of the proposed smart home system. Arduino uno microcontroller provides the needed processing power for driving the aforementioned devices. Proteaus design suite together with futzing was used for the system design and simulation.

7. Microcontroller GSM Based LPG (Liqufied Petroleum Gas) Leakage, Monitoring, Detection And Control System

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) leakage poses great danger in this era where its use has become an important source of energy for industries, homes and vehicles alike. A means of avoiding dangers associated with LPG leakage is to install LPG leakage detectors at susceptible areas. The objective of this proposed project therefore is to design and implement a microcontroller based LPG leakage monitoring, detection and control system. The system will be able to detect LPG leakage using MQ-5 gas sensor and alerts the user of the leakage through GSM-based SMS and a buzzer. Most importantly, the system shuts off LPG supply to minimise wastage and prevent accidents.

8. Development Of A Door Lock Security System Based On Automatic Speech Recognition

The security of our homes and properties are of utmost importance as various individuals and engineers have worked on ways to improve the security of our homes. This project which is “Development of a door lock security system based on speech recognition” is aimed at introducing maximum security and assurance to individuals and their properties in their various homes. This project was developed based on the use of the MATLAB software, which is programmed to recognize certain users and give a particular user (amongst the recognized users) control over the access to home for security purposes. In the training, MFCC feature extraction technique was used for extraction of appropriate features from the user’s speech signal. Vector Quantization using LBG algorithm (VQLBG) was also employed in the recognition phase of the speaker recognition system.

9. Development Of A Decision Support System For Automatic Fertilizer Application Using Artificial Neural Network

The development in science and technology has vital contribution towards improving the country’s economy. One of the sectors that contribute to the country’s economy is agriculture which needs the improvement of science and technology from time to time such as in its fertigation system. The manual applications of fertilizer that are commonly used are very stressful and consume enormous time especially when cultivating a large area of land and also do not ensure efficient management of fertilizer. Inefficient management of nutrient inputs has put a large constraint on the environment and human’ s health. Indiscriminate use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers has led to ground water pollution.

10. Development Of A Nigerian Vehicle Plate Character Recognition System Using Template Matching

Tracking of vehicles, manage on-site car parking spaces, and warehouse traffic are problem that need real-time solution and can be solve by using character recognition in vehicle plate which can be obtain by using different classifier e.g. artificial neural network, fuzzy logic, Neural-fuzzy hybridization, and generic algorithm, template matching which can solve regression and binary classification problems. This project aims to develop a system that will detect and recognize plate number images of Nigerian vehicles using template matching. The proposed system will use the following phase to achieve the result image acquisition by using digital camera, image preprocessing by greyscale, remove noise, image enhancement and thresholding, then image segmentation by multiple thresholding, dilation, enrode and dissection.

11. An Android-Based Expert System For Diagnosis Of Selected Tropical Diseases Using Fuzzy-Analytic Hierarchy Process

Nigeria. a country in the tropics, is not free from tropical diseases. The commonest ones being malaria, typhoid and tuberculosis. Malaria alone results in over 300,000 deaths every year. Adding to this, there is a serious shortage of Doctors. A survey by the World Health Organization has shown that there is approximately I Doctor to about 2,660 Nigerians. Due to this, the Health sector is stressed beyond its carrying capacity and Doctors cannot perform at their best. Nigerians are discouraged from going to the hospital because when they do. they meet with unending queues and angry health personnel. These result in self medication, drug abuse and deaths. Several works have been developed to aid diagnosing tropical diseases using fuzzy logic. This work developed an Android-based solution to shorten patient waiting time.

12. Determination Of End-To-End Delays Of Switched Ethernet Local Area Networks

The design of switched local area networks in practice has largely been based on heuristics and experience; in fact, in many situations, no network design is carried out, but only network installation (network cabling and nodes/equipment placements). This has resulted in local area networks that are sluggish, and that fail to satisfy the users that are connected to such networks in terms of speed of uploading and downloading of information, when, a user’s computer is in a communication session with other computers or host machines that are attached to the local area network or with switching devices that connect the local area network to wide area networks. Therefore, the need to provide deterministic guarantees on the delays of packets’ flows when designing switched local area networks has led to the need for analytic and formal basis for designing such networks. This is because, if the maximum packet delay between any two nodes of a network is not known, it is impossible to provide a deterministic guarantee of worst case response time of packets’ flows. This is the problem that this research work set out to solve.

Browse through thousands of computer engineering project topics you can adapt for your undergraduate/graduate research work.