8,844 research outputs found
Diffusion Based Molecular Communication: Principle, Key Technologies, and Challenges
Molecular communication (MC) is a kind of communication technology based on
biochemical molecules for internet of bio-nano things, in which the biochemical
molecule is used as the information carrier for the interconnection of
nano-devices. In this paper, the basic principle of diffusion based MC and the
corresponding key technologies are comprehensively surveyed. In particular, the
state-of-the-art achievements relative to the diffusion based MC are discussed
and compared, including the system model, the system performance analysis with
key influencing factors, the information coding and modulation techniques.
Meanwhile, the multi-hop nano-network based on the diffusion MC is presented as
well. Additionally, given the extensiveness of the research area, open issues
and challenges are presented to spur future investigations, in which the
involvement of channel model, information theory, self-organizing nano-network,
and biochemical applications are put forward
A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Advancements in Molecular Communication
With much advancement in the field of nanotechnology, bioengineering and
synthetic biology over the past decade, microscales and nanoscales devices are
becoming a reality. Yet the problem of engineering a reliable communication
system between tiny devices is still an open problem. At the same time, despite
the prevalence of radio communication, there are still areas where traditional
electromagnetic waves find it difficult or expensive to reach. Points of
interest in industry, cities, and medical applications often lie in embedded
and entrenched areas, accessible only by ventricles at scales too small for
conventional radio waves and microwaves, or they are located in such a way that
directional high frequency systems are ineffective. Inspired by nature, one
solution to these problems is molecular communication (MC), where chemical
signals are used to transfer information. Although biologists have studied MC
for decades, it has only been researched for roughly 10 year from a
communication engineering lens. Significant number of papers have been
published to date, but owing to the need for interdisciplinary work, much of
the results are preliminary. In this paper, the recent advancements in the
field of MC engineering are highlighted. First, the biological, chemical, and
physical processes used by an MC system are discussed. This includes different
components of the MC transmitter and receiver, as well as the propagation and
transport mechanisms. Then, a comprehensive survey of some of the recent works
on MC through a communication engineering lens is provided. The paper ends with
a technology readiness analysis of MC and future research directions.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial
SMIET: Simultaneous Molecular Information and Energy Transfer
The performance of communication systems is fundamentally limited by the loss
of energy through propagation and circuit inefficiencies. In this article, we
show that it is possible to achieve ultra low energy communications at the
nano-scale, if diffusive molecules are used for carrying data. Whilst the
energy of electromagnetic waves will inevitably decay as a function of
transmission distance and time, the energy in individual molecules does not.
Over time, the receiver has an opportunity to recover some, if not all of the
molecular energy transmitted. The article demonstrates the potential of
ultra-low energy simultaneous molecular information and energy transfer (SMIET)
through the design of two different nano-relay systems, and the discusses how
molecular communications can benefit more from crowd energy harvesting than
traditional wave-based systems
Molecular Communication Using Brownian Motion with Drift
Inspired by biological communication systems, molecular communication has
been proposed as a viable scheme to communicate between nano-sized devices
separated by a very short distance. Here, molecules are released by the
transmitter into the medium, which are then sensed by the receiver. This paper
develops a preliminary version of such a communication system focusing on the
release of either one or two molecules into a fluid medium with drift. We
analyze the mutual information between transmitter and the receiver when
information is encoded in the time of release of the molecule. Simplifying
assumptions are required in order to calculate the mutual information, and
theoretical results are provided to show that these calculations are upper
bounds on the true mutual information. Furthermore, optimized degree
distributions are provided, which suggest transmission strategies for a variety
of drift velocities.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. on
NanoBioscienc
Relaying in Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication
Molecular communication between biological entities is a new paradigm in
communications. Recently, we studied molecular communication between two nodes
formed from synthetic bacteria. Due to high randomness in behavior of bacteria,
we used a population of them in each node. The reliability of such
communication systems depends on both the maximum concentration of molecules
that a transmitter node is able to produce at the receiver node as well as the
number of bacteria in each nodes. This maximum concentration of molecules falls
with distance which makes the communication to the far nodes nearly impossible.
In order to alleviate this problem, in this paper, we propose to use a
molecular relaying node. The relay node can resend the message either by the
different or the same type of molecules as the original signal from the
transmitter. We study two scenarios of relaying. In the first scenario, the
relay node simply senses the received concentration and forwards it to the
receiver. We show that this sense and forward scenario, depending on the type
of molecules used for relaying, results in either increasing the range of
concentration of molecules at the receiver or increasing the effective number
of bacteria in the receiver node. For both cases of sense and forward relaying,
we obtain the resulting improvement in channel capacity. We conclude that
multi-type molecular relaying outperforms the single-type relaying. In the
second scenario, we study the decode and forward relaying for the M-ary
signaling scheme. We show that this relaying strategy increases the reliability
of M-ary communication significantly
On the Physical Design of Molecular Communication Receiver Based on Nanoscale Biosensors
Molecular communications (MC), where molecules are used to encode, transmit,
and receive information, is a promising means of enabling the coordination of
nanoscale devices. The paradigm has been extensively studied from various
aspects, including channel modeling and noise analysis. Comparatively little
attention has been given to the physical design of molecular receiver and
transmitter, envisioning biological synthetic cells with intrinsic molecular
reception and transmission capabilities as the future nanomachines. However,
this assumption leads to a discrepancy between the envisaged applications
requiring complex communication interfaces and protocols, and the very limited
computational capacities of the envisioned biological nanomachines. In this
paper, we examine the feasibility of designing a molecular receiver, in a
physical domain other than synthetic biology, meeting the basic requirements of
nanonetwork applications. We first review the state-of-the-art biosensing
approaches to determine whether they can inspire a receiver design. We reveal
that nanoscale field effect transistor based electrical biosensor technology
(bioFET) is a particularly useful starting point for designing a molecular
receiver. Focusing on bioFET-based molecular receivers with a conceptual
approach, we provide a guideline elaborating on their operation principles,
performance metrics and design parameters. We then provide a simple model for
signal flow in silicon nanowire (SiNW) FET-based molecular receiver. Lastly, we
discuss the practical challenges of implementing the receiver and present the
future research avenues from a communication theoretical perspective
Compound Poisson Noise Sources in Diffusion-based Molecular Communication
Diffusion-based molecular communication (DMC) is one of the most promising
approaches for realizing nano-scale communications for healthcare applications.
The DMC systems in in-vivo environments may encounter biological entities that
release molecules identical to the molecules used for signaling as part of
their functionality. Such entities in the environment act as external noise
sources from the DMC system's perspective. In this paper, the release of
molecules by biological external noise sources is particularly modeled as a
compound Poisson process. The impact of compound Poisson noise sources (CPNSs)
on the performance of a point-to-point DMC system is investigated. To this end,
the noise from the CPNS observed at the receiver is characterized. Considering
a simple on-off keying (OOK) modulation and formulating symbol-by-symbol
maximum likelihood (ML) detector, the performance of DMC system in the presence
of the CPNS is analyzed. For special case of CPNS in high-rate regime, the
noise received from the CPNS is approximated as a Poisson process whose rate is
normally distributed. In this case, it is proved that a simple single-threshold
detector (STD) is an optimal ML detector. Our results reveal that in general,
adopting the conventional simple homogeneous Poisson noise model may lead to
overly optimistic performance predictions, if a CPNS is present
Molecular communication in fluid media: The additive inverse Gaussian noise channel
We consider molecular communication, with information conveyed in the time of
release of molecules. The main contribution of this paper is the development of
a theoretical foundation for such a communication system. Specifically, we
develop the additive inverse Gaussian (IG) noise channel model: a channel in
which the information is corrupted by noise with an inverse Gaussian
distribution. We show that such a channel model is appropriate for molecular
communication in fluid media - when propagation between transmitter and
receiver is governed by Brownian motion and when there is positive drift from
transmitter to receiver. Taking advantage of the available literature on the IG
distribution, upper and lower bounds on channel capacity are developed, and a
maximum likelihood receiver is derived. Theory and simulation results are
presented which show that such a channel does not have a single quality measure
analogous to signal-to-noise ratio in the AWGN channel. It is also shown that
the use of multiple molecules leads to reduced error rate in a manner akin to
diversity order in wireless communications. Finally, we discuss some open
problems in molecular communications that arise from the IG system model.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information
Theory. Corrects minor typos in the first versio
Bio-imitaiton of Mexican migration routes to the USA with slime mould on 3D terrains
Plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum is a large single cell visible by unaided
eye. It shows sophisticated behavioural traits in foraging for nutrients and
developing an optimal transport network of protoplasmic tubes spanning sources
of nutrients. When placed in an environment with distributed sources of
nutrients the cell 'computes' an optimal graph spanning the nutrients by
growing a network of protoplasmic tubes. P. polycephalum imitates development
of man-made transport networks of a country when configuration of nutrients
represents major urban areas. We employ this feature of the slime mould to
imitate mexican migration to USA. The Mexican migration to USA is the World's
largest migration system. We bio-physically imitate the migration using slime
mould P. polycephalum. In laboratory experiments with 3D Nylon terrains of USA
we imitated development of migratory routes from Mexico-USA border to ten urban
areas with high concentration of Mexican migrants. From results of laboratory
experiments we extracted topologies of migratory routes, and highlighted a role
of elevations in shaping the human movement networks
Capacity of a Simple Intercellular Signal Transduction Channel
We model the ligand-receptor molecular communication channel with a
discrete-time Markov model, and show how to obtain the capacity of this
channel. We show that the capacity-achieving input distribution is iid;
further, unusually for a channel with memory, we show that feedback does not
increase the capacity of this channel.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the 2013 IEEE International Symposium
on Information Theor
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