This assignment is the first of two versions of what could be your "survey" or your "research literature review" for your thesis.  This particular version will be 2 pages long, short and sweet, suitable for inclusion in a conference publication.  Go and find some conference publications in your area and see what they look like.  They frequently cite to other authoritative sources for broad, general principles in order to get to the open areas quickly and without much discussion.  That is necessary in a conference paper.  

The main focus of this work is:

1. show knowledge of the area
2. recognize the main metrics used in your research area (note those you intend to use for your work)
3. display the open areas in the research (to show where worthwhile work remains to be done)  

For those of you who already have an area and a research question, I heartily recommend that you begin to build a matrix or a table to display the metrics along one dimension and the main "solutions" along the other dimension.  This will be a very important (and often overlooked) part of your thesis.  It will help you to evaluate your solution according to the accepted metrics (or to realize you need to develop one :-)  It will help place the other research into a framework where you may evaluate your own work and convince others you've done your homework.

Note that you will more fully develop this version for the next assignment, the 3 - 5 page version suitable for inclusion in a thesis.