Large scale MEMS robots cooperative map building based on realistic simulation of nano-wireless communications

International audienceThe Claytronics project has produced interesting hardware components like cylindric micro-robots called catoms and software models to enable the concept of programmable matter. One application is the use of several catoms linked together so that they can " walk ". These walkers can explore an area and thanks to electromagnetic wireless nano-networks, they can communicate with each other sharing the map of the place to explore. In this paper, we study the different parameters influencing the transmission quality of the map to a sink which uses both traditional wireless and wireless nano-communication networks

Achievable Rate-Power Tradeoff in THz SWIPT Systems with Resonant Tunnelling Diodes

In this paper, we study terahertz (THz) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems. Since coherent information detection is challenging at THz frequencies and Schottky diodes are not usable for THz energy harvesting (EH), we employ unipolar amplitude shift keying (ASK) modulation at the transmitter (TX) and a resonant tunnelling diode (RTD)- based EH circuit at the receiver (RX) to extract both information and power from the received signal. However, the electrical properties of Schottky diodes and RTDs are different, and unlike EH receivers based on a single Schottky diode, an accurate closed-form EH model for RTD-based RXs is not available, yet. In this paper, we model the dependency of the instantaneous RX output power on the instantaneous received power by a non-linear piecewise function, whose parameters are adjusted to fit circuit simulation results. We formulate an optimization problem to maximize the mutual information between the TX and RX signals subject to constraints on the peak amplitude of the transmitted signal and the required average harvested power at the RX. Furthermore, we determine a feasibility condition for the formulated problem, and for high and low required average harvested powers, we derive the achievable information rate numerically and in closed form, respectively. Our simulation results highlight a tradeoff between the information rate and the average harvested power. Finally, we show that this tradeoff is determined by the peak amplitude of the transmitted signal and the maximum instantaneous harvested power for low and high received signal powers, respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, submitted for possible conference publicatio

Facilitating Internet of Things on the Edge

The evolution of electronics and wireless technologies has entered a new era, the Internet of Things (IoT). Presently, IoT technologies influence the global market, bringing benefits in many areas, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and entertainment. Modern IoT devices serve as a thin client with data processing performed in a remote computing node, such as a cloud server or a mobile edge compute unit. These computing units own significant resources that allow prompt data processing. The user experience for such an approach relies drastically on the availability and quality of the internet connection. In this case, if the internet connection is unavailable, the resulting operations of IoT applications can be completely disrupted. It is worth noting that emerging IoT applications are even more throughput demanding and latency-sensitive which makes communication networks a practical bottleneck for the service provisioning. This thesis aims to eliminate the limitations of wireless access, via the improvement of connectivity and throughput between the devices on the edge, as well as their network identification, which is fundamentally important for IoT service management. The introduction begins with a discussion on the emerging IoT applications and their demands. Subsequent chapters introduce scenarios of interest, describe the proposed solutions and provide selected performance evaluation results. Specifically, we start with research on the use of degraded memory chips for network identification of IoT devices as an alternative to conventional methods, such as IMEI; these methods are not vulnerable to tampering and cloning. Further, we introduce our contributions for improving connectivity and throughput among IoT devices on the edge in a case where the mobile network infrastructure is limited or totally unavailable. Finally, we conclude the introduction with a summary of the results achieved

Terahertz-based joint communication and sensing for precision agriculture: a 6G use-case

By 2050, experts estimate that the agricultural produce must increase by 60%–70% to meet the needs of the ever increasing population of the world. To this aim, the concept of precision agriculture or smart farming has recently been coined. The idea of precision agriculture is well represented as a smart management system, having the ability to monitor, observe, sense, measure and control the health and water contents in plants at nano-scale and crops at macro-scale. The goal is to maximise the production while preserving the vital resources. The combination of terahertz (THz) based sensing technology to estimate plant health at a cellular level, and wireless sensor networks deployed within crops to monitor different variables while making intelligent decisions is far reaching. The integration and operation of such a macro-nano-sensor system requires a sustainable communication infrastructure that considers the demands of remote and agile agricultural environments. In this paper, an integrated sensing and communication system for plant health monitoring that utilises THz signals, is presented as a 6G use case. The joint architecture is outlined and various challenges including energy harvesting, practical implementation among others, followed by recommendations for future research are presented

Universal Transceivers: Opportunities and Future Directions for the Internet of Everything (IoE)

The Internet of Everything (IoE) is a recently introduced information and communication technology (ICT) framework promising for extending the human connectivity to the entire universe, which itself can be regarded as a natural IoE, an interconnected network of everything we perceive. The countless number of opportunities that can be enabled by IoE through a blend of heterogeneous ICT technologies across different scales and environments and a seamless interface with the natural IoE impose several fundamental challenges, such as interoperability, ubiquitous connectivity, energy efficiency, and miniaturization. The key to address these challenges is to advance our communication technology to match the multi-scale, multi-modal, and dynamic features of the natural IoE. To this end, we introduce a new communication device concept, namely the universal IoE transceiver, that encompasses transceiver architectures that are characterized by multi-modality in communication (with modalities such as molecular, RF/THz, optical and acoustic) and in energy harvesting (with modalities such as mechanical, solar, biochemical), modularity, tunability, and scalability. Focusing on these fundamental traits, we provide an overview of the opportunities that can be opened up by micro/nanoscale universal transceiver architectures towards realizing the IoE applications. We also discuss the most pressing challenges in implementing such transceivers and briefly review the open research directions. Our discussion is particularly focused on the opportunities and challenges pertaining to the IoE physical layer, which can enable the efficient and effective design of higher-level techniques. We believe that such universal transceivers can pave the way for seamless connection and communication with the universe at a deeper level and pioneer the construction of the forthcoming IoE landscape

Self-Sustainable Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Simultaneous Terahertz Information and Power Transfer (STIPT)

10.13039/501100001809-National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 62001107, 61971129, 61960206005 and 61871128); 10.13039/501100008868-Basic Research Project of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Science and Technology (Grant Number: BK20190339 and Bk20192002)

Fundamentals of electromagnetic nanonetworks in the terahertz band

Nanotechnology is providing a new set of tools to the engineering community to design nanoscale components with unprecedented functionalities. The integration of several nano-components into a single entity will enable the development of advanced nanomachines. Nanonetworks, i.e., networks of nanomachines, will enable a plethora of applications in the biomedical, environmental, industrial and military fields. To date, it is still not clear how nanomachines will communicate. The miniaturization of a classical antenna to meet the size requirements of nanomachines would impose the use of very high radiation frequencies. The available transmission bandwidth increases with the antenna resonant frequency, but so does the propagation loss. Due to the expectedly very limited power of nanomachines, the feasibility of nanonetworks would be compromised if this approach were followed. Therefore, a new wireless technology is needed to enable this paradigm. The objective of this thesis is to establish the foundations of graphene-enabled electromagnetic communication in nanonetworks. First, novel graphene-based plasmonic nano-antennas are proposed, modeled and analyzed. The obtained results point to the Terahertz Band (0.1-10 THz) as the frequency range of operation of novel nano-antennas. For this, the second contribution in this thesis is the development of a novel channel model for Terahertz Band communication. In addition, the channel capacity of the Terahertz Band is numerically investigated to highlight the potential of this still-unregulated frequency band. Third, a novel modulation based on the transmission of femtosecond-long pulses is proposed and its performance is analyzed.% in terms of achievable information rates. Fourth, the use of low-weight codes to prevent channel errors in nanonetworks is proposed and investigated. Fifth, a novel symbol detection scheme at the receiver is developed to support the proposed modulation scheme. Sixth, a new energy model for self-powered nanomachines with piezoelectric nano-generators is developed. Moreover, a new Medium Access Control protocol tailored to the Terahertz Band is developed. Finally, a one-to-one nano-link is emulated to validate the proposed solutions.Ph.D

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer for AF relaying nanonetworks in the terahertz band

A nanonetwork is comprised of nanoscale sensors and communicating devices facilitating communication at the nanoscale, which is a promising technology for application in health applications such as intra-body health monitoring and drug delivery. However, the communication performance within a nanonetwork is substantially limited by the energy loss as the Electromagnetic (EM) wave propagates along the channel. Energy harvesting for nanosensor networks can provide a way to overcome the energy bottleneck without considering the lifetime of batteries. Moreover, relaying protocols for nanoscale communications have been proposed to improve the communication performance and extend the transmission distances among nanosensors within nanonetworks. The combination of energy harvesting and a relaying protocol provides an emerging solution not only to overcome the aforementioned energy issues but also enhance the system performance. Therefore, in this paper, simultaneous wireless information and power transfer nanonetworks in the Terahertz (THz) Band (0.1-10 THz) is proposed. An amplify and forward (AF) relaying nanonetwork in this band is investigated, where the relay harvests energy from the received THz signal which is then consumed to forward the information to the destination. Performance based on both time-switching and power-splitting protocols is analyzed. The numerical results show the optimal power-splitting ratio and time switching ratio that achieves the maximum throughput at the destination as well as the impact of transmission distance on system performance. It is seen that the power-splitting protocol gives greater throughput than that of the time-switching protocol

Terahertz communications at the nanoscale

Nanotechnology reduces the sizes of devices to a scale of hundreds of nanometres. The integration of such nano-sized entities equipped with fundamental functional units enables the development of nanosensors. These offer the prospect of the development of new tools to discover novel events at the nanoscale. To enlarge the capabilities of individual nanosensors, a number of them can be interconnected to establish nanosensor based networks, namely nanonetworks. These will empower new applications in many fields, such as healthcare, military, and environmental monitoring, and so on. The miniatured size of nanoantennas and their properties lead to communications within nanonetworks within the Terahertz (THz) band (0.1 – 10 THz). The objective of this thesis is to improve the system performance of graphene-enabled EM nanonetworks in this THz Band. Firstly, the channel model for THz waves is studied, and the path loss, channel noise and channel capacity for the THz band are analysed. Secondly, a novel three-terminal relaying protocol for nanonetworks is proposed and its performance is numerically investigated. Both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying modes are studied. Thirdly, a new nano-rectenna based energy harvesting system is developed to power nanosensors within nanonetworks. The results obtained indicate the great potential and advantage of nano-rectennas. Fourthly, a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system for nanonetworks in the THz Band is proposed. An amplify and forward (AF) relaying nanonetwork in this band is investigated. The performance of the system based on both time-switching and power-splitting protocols is numerically analyse