Odor-Based Molecular Communications: State-of-the-Art, Vision, Challenges, and Frontier Directions

Humankind mimics the processes and strategies that nature has perfected and uses them as a model to address its problems. That has recently found a new direction, i.e., a novel communication technology called molecular communication (MC), using molecules to encode, transmit, and receive information. Despite extensive research, an innate MC method with plenty of natural instances, i.e., olfactory or odor communication, has not yet been studied with the tools of information and communication technologies (ICT). Existing studies focus on digitizing this sense and developing actuators without inspecting the principles of odor-based information coding and MC, which significantly limits its application potential. Hence, there is a need to focus cross-disciplinary research efforts to reveal the fundamentals of this unconventional communication modality from an ICT perspective. The ways of natural odor MC in nature need to be anatomized and engineered for end-to-end communication among humans and human-made things to enable several multi-sense augmented reality technologies reinforced with olfactory senses for novel applications and solutions in the Internet of Everything (IoE). This paper introduces the concept of odor-based molecular communication (OMC) and provides a comprehensive examination of olfactory systems. It explores odor communication in nature, including aspects of odor information, channels, reception, spatial perception, and cognitive functions. Additionally, a comprehensive comparison of various communication systems sets the foundation for further investigation. By highlighting the unique characteristics, advantages, and potential applications of OMC through this comparative analysis, the paper lays the groundwork for exploring the modeling of an end-to-end OMC channel, considering the design of OMC transmitters and receivers, and developing innovative OMC techniques

Advanced Transport Protocols for Next Generation Heterogeneous Wireless Network Architectures

The revolutionary advances in the wireless communication technologies are inspiring the researchers to envision the next generation wireless networking architectures, i.e., Next Generation Wireless Internet (NGWI), InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet, and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). There exist significant technological challenges for the realization of these envisioned next generation network architectures. NGWI will be the convergence of the Internet and heterogeneous wireless architectures, which have diverse characteristics and hence pose different sets of research challenges, to achieve anywhere, anytime seamless service to the mobile users. Similarly, the unique characteristics and challenges posed by deep space communications call for novel networking protocols to realize the IPN Internet objective. Furthermore, in order to realize the potential gains of WSN, it is imperative that communication challenges imposed by resource constraints of sensor nodes must be efficiently addressed with novel solutions tailored to the WSN paradigm. The objective of this research is to develop new advanced transport protocols for reliable data transport and real-time multimedia delivery in the next generation heterogeneous wireless network architectures. More specifically, the analytical rate control (ARC) protocol for real-time multimedia delivery is first proposed for wired/wireless hybrid networks. Next, a new rate control scheme (RCS) is proposed to achieve high throughput performance and fairness for real-time multimedia traffic over the satellite links. The unified adaptive transport layer (ATL) suite and its protocols for both reliable data transport (TCP-ATL) and real-time multimedia delivery (RCP-ATL) are introduced for the NGWI. A new reliable transport protocol for data transport in the IPN Internet (TP-Planet) is then proposed to address the unique challenges of the IPN Internet backbone links. A new integrated tranmission protocol (ITP) is then proposed for reliable data transport over multihop IPN Internet paths. Finally, the event-to-sink reliable transport (ESRT) protocol is proposed to achieve reliable event transport with minimum energy expenditure in WSN.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Akyildiz, Ian; Committee Member: Braun, Robert; Committee Member: Ji, Chuanyi; Committee Member: Sivakumar, Raghupathy; Committee Member: Steffes, Pau

On Molecular Multiple-Access, Broadcast, and Relay Channels in Nanonetworks

Molecular communication is a novel paradigm that uses mo-lecules as an information carrier to enable nanomachines to communicate with each other. Interconnections of the nanomachines with molecular communication is envisioned as a nanonetwork. Nanonetworks are expected to enable nanomechines to cooperatively share information such as odor, flavour, light, or any chemical state. In this paper, we develop and present models for the molecular multiple-access, broadcast, and relay channels in a nanonetwork and derive their capacity expressions. Numerical results reveal that the molecular multiple-access of nanomachines to a sin-gle nanomachine can be possible with the high molecular communication capacity by selecting the appropriate molec-ular communication parameters. Similarly, the molecular broadcast can also allow a single nanomachine to commu-nicate with a number of nanomachines with high molecular communication capacity. As a combination of the molecu-lar multiple-access and broadcast channel, we show that the molecular relay channel can improve the molecular commu-nication capacity between two nanomachines using a relay nanomachine

On Channel Capacity and Error Compensation in Molecular Communication

Molecular communication is a novel paradigm that uses molecules as an information carrier to enable nanomachines to communicate with each other, Controlled molecule delivery between two nanomachines is one of the most important challenges which must be addressed to enable the molecular communication. Therefore, it is essential to develop an information theoretical approach to find out communication capacity of the molecular channel. In this paper, we develop an information theoretical approach for capacity of a. molecular channel between two nanomachines. Using the principles of mass action kinetics, we first introduce a molecule delivery model for the molecular communication between two nanomachines called as Transmitter Nanomachine (TN) and Receiver Nanomachine (RN). Then, we derive a closed form expression for capacity of the channel between TN and RN. Furthermore, we propose an adaptive Molecular Error Compensation (MEC) scheme for the molecular communication between TN and RN. MEC allows TN to select an appropriate molecular bit transmission probability to maximize molecular communication capacity with respect to environmental factors such as temperature and distance between nanomachines. Numerical analysis show that selecting appropriate molecular communication parameters such as concentration of emitted molecules, duration of molecule emission, and molecular bit transmission probability it can be possible to achieve. high molecular communication capacity for the molecular communication channel between two nanomachines. Moreover, the numerical analysis reveals that MEC provides more than % 100 capacity improvement in the molecular communication selecting the most appropriate molecular transmission probability

Carbon Nanotube-Based Nanoscale Ad Hoc Networks

Recent developments in nanoscale electronics allow current wireless technologies to function in nanoscale environments. Especially due to their incredible electrical and electromagnetic properties, carbon nanotubes are promising physical phenomenon that are used for the realization of a nanoscale communication paradigm. This provides a very large set of new promising applications such as collaborative disease detection with communicating in-vivo nanosensor nodes and distributed chemical attack detection with a network of nanorobots. Hence, one of the most challenging subjects for such applications becomes the realization of nanoscale ad hoc networks. In this article, we define the concept of carbon nanotube-based nanoscale ad hoc networks for future nanotechnology applications. Carbon nanotube-based nanoscale Ad hoc NET-works (CANETs) can be perceived as the down-scaled version of traditional wireless ad hoc networks without downgrading its main functionalities. The objective of this work is to introduce this novel and interdisciplinary research field and highlight major barriers toward its realization

Single and Multiple-Access Channel Capacity in Molecular Nanonetworks

Molecular communication is a new nano-scale communication paradigm that enables nanomachines to communicate with each other by emitting molecules to their surrounding environment. Nanonetworks are also envisioned to be composed of a number of nanomachines with molecular communication capability that are deployed in an environment to share specific molecular information such as odor, flavour, light, or any chemical state. In this paper, using the principles of natural ligand-receptor binding mechanisms in biology, we first derive a capacity expression for single molecular channel in which a single Transmitter Nanomachine (TN) communicates with a single Receiver Nanomachine (RN). Then, we investigate the capacity of the molecular multiple-access channel in which multiple TNs communicate with a single RN. Numerical results reveal that high molecular communication capacities can be attainable for the single and multiple-access molecular channels