I'm currently struggling to structure and organize my "related work" chapter of my PhD thesis.
I've stumbled across the terms "related work", "background", "preliminaries" and "state of the art". Mainly, I understand that some deal with established knowledge that is being taught in textbooks, and which is the technological base for my work (e.g., elliptic curve (EC) cryptography and digital signatures to protect communication among servers). The other deal with the most recent academic state of the art, e.g., novel communication protocols based on elliptic curves.
It's also clear to me, that I need to differentiate my work by having contributions which go beyond the state of the art, and which differ from related work.
Hoever, I struggle to realted this terms, and to make up a meaningful chapter outline.
I was thinking of:
Background and related work chapter
- Background and preliminaries
- Technology X
- Technology Y
- Technology Z
- Related work and state of the art
- Overall related work to the kind of system I build
- Overall related work to sub-aspect A
- Overall related work to sub-aspect B
- Overall related work to sub-aspect C
- Difference to related work and state of the art
Can anyone help me clarify the relation of these terms, or hint me to page clarifying them? Also suggestions regarding my outline would be welcome.