Editorial: Inaugural Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications

Abstract

E are very pleased to present the inaugural issue of the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-scale Communications (TMBMC). The Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-scale Communications is a peer-reviewed, hybrid publication devoted to the principles, design and analysis of communication systems that use physics beyond classical electromagnetism. The frontier of communications research is communications beyond conventional electromagnetism. At this frontier, researchers find solutions to difficult communication problems: for example, molecular communication, in which messages are conveyed in patterns of molecules, is a solution to the notoriously difficult nanoscale networking problem. Moreover, this direction of research gives insight into important scientific problems: for example, information theory has been shown to describe the foraging behaviour of motile bacteria. These, and related, topics of research have attracted a rapid increase in attention over the past few years, as communications researchers look for new problems and find new applications, particularly as they relate to biological and nanoscale (or multiscale) communication problems. Nanomachines that enable in vitro drug delivery are being demonstrated, biological circuits that provide the building blocks for filters and equalizers have been developed, organisms are being engineered for custom actions, and both lab and process on-chip techniques have emerged. We are now poised to examine these systems either as potential communication devices or use communications and systems theory more broadly as lens through which we can examine such biological systems. In fact, the distinction between communications, control and sensing is blurred in biological and natural systems. What is clear is that novel signaling modalities are becoming a reality via chemistry, biology, physics, electrical systems at vastly different scales, and other principles not previously examined. To address these frontier problems of communication, we are pleased to introduce this, the inaugural issue of the IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and MultiScale Communications. As both editors and researchers, our