Duality between Coronavirus Transmission and Air-based Macroscopic Molecular Communication

This contribution exploits the duality between a viral infection process and macroscopic air-based molecular communication. Airborne aerosol and droplet transmission through human respiratory processes is modeled as an instance of a multiuser molecular communication scenario employing respiratory-event-driven molecular variable-concentration shift keying. Modeling is aided by experiments that are motivated by a macroscopic air-based molecular communication testbed. In artificially induced coughs, a saturated aqueous solution containing a fluorescent dye mixed with saliva is released by an adult test person. The emitted particles are made visible by means of optical detection exploiting the fluorescent dye. The number of particles recorded is significantly higher in test series without mouth and nose protection than in those with a wellfitting medical mask. A simulation tool for macroscopic molecular communication processes is extended and used for estimating the transmission of infectious aerosols in different environments. Towards this goal, parameters obtained through self experiments are taken. The work is inspired by the recent outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications for the special issue "Section II: Molecular Communications for Diagnostics and Therapeutic Development of Infectious Diseases

Coexistence Model of IEEE 802.11b and 802.15.4 for Industrial Applications in Oil or Gas Station

Abstract-- The coexistence between IEEE 802.11b Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a very sensitive issue while dealing with heterogeneous wireless network standards forming a single network. IEEE 802.15.4 supports low data rate, low power and IEEE 802.11b operates with higher data rate. IEEE 802.15.4 sensor devices are very much vulnerable to interference with IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard devices. Both these standards operate at Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band of 2.4 GHz. WLAN and WSN need to co-exist to serve as a reliable communication network in many real life scenarios like Oil & Gas fields, battle fields etc. The wireless communication skeleton makes the industrial monitoring and management control easy as compared to a wired system. In many industrial applications, WSN data is very much crucial and this kind of data should be kept unaffected from any interference that may be caused by any WLAN devices nearby. In this paper, efforts have been made to resolve the various problems which arise due to the coexistence of WLAN and WSN standards operating at the same frequency bandwidth. We focus on the issue of protecting WSN from WLAN interference. It has been attempted by selecting appropriate operating ranges for different devices based on analyses of various issues which form the essential basis for the conventional packet collision avoidance mechanisms to minimize the interference effect for measuring various set of parameters. Our model has been simulated with a sample test-bed and results are obtained for different WLAN packet sizes which help to understand the impact of WLAN on WSN

Infectious Disease Transmission via Aerosol Propagation from a Molecular Communication Perspective : Shannon Meets Coronavirus

Molecular communication is not only able to mimic biological and chemical communication mechanisms, but also provides a theoretical framework for viral infection processes. In this tutorial, aerosol and droplet transmission is modeled as a multiuser scenario with mobile nodes, related to broadcasting and relaying. In contrast to data communication systems, in the application of pathogen-laden aerosol transmission, mutual information between nodes should be minimized. Towards this goal, several countermeasures are reasoned. The findings are supported by experimental results and by an advanced particle simulation tool. This work is inspired by the recent outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, but also applicable to other airborne infectious diseases like influenza.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, submitted to IEEE Communications Magazine for the Feature Topic on "Nano-Networking for Nano-, Micro-, and Macro-Scale Applications