Internet Of Bio-Nano Things Research Articles

Efficient Framework Analysis for Targeted Drug Delivery Based on Internet of Bio-NanoThings.

The Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNTs) is a novel paradigm that derives from synthetic biology and advances in nanotechnology for controlling the embedded nanodevices in various medical applications. However, numerous studies have focused on communication efficiency among the nanodevices in a given network, the challenges such as the design and the development of the nanodevices, and the coordination of molecular communication within the wireless body area network (BAN), and the interface connection between the BAN and the Internet are yet to be addressed. Therefore, in this study, we present a framework analysis comprising of the compartmental model, for studying the effects and variances in drug concentration that occur inside intra-body nanonetworks through IoBNT, while taking into account the properties of target cells as well as the ligand-receptor binding mechanism. A performance analysis of the proposed framework for the forward link (i.e., from the Internet to the intra-body nanonetwork) and reverse link (i.e., from the intra-body nanonetwork to the Internet) is presented. The simulation results of the developed framework reveal its ability to enhance the delivery of therapeutic drugs to the target cell while minimizing the side effects in healthy cells.

On the Exact Performance Analysis of Molecular Communication via Diffusion for Internet of Bio-Nano Things.

Internet of Bio-Nano Things, (IoBNT), is an ecosystem, where integration of micro and nano scale devices designed via synthetic biology communicates information. One of the communication concepts adopted in IoBNT is molecular communications via diffusion (MCvD). Inter-symbol interference (ISI) is a major cause of the performance degradation in MCvD systems. The accurate determination of the bit error probability (BEP) when ISI is present is therefore important. Most of the past literature has used the normal approximation to a binomial distribution to evaluate the approximate BEP in MCvD systems. In this paper, we derive a new expression to evaluate the exact BEP without using a normal or any other approximation when the ISI caused by a bit extends over an arbitrary number of future bit intervals. Our BEP expression applies to any receiver, full or partial absorbing, as long as its hitting probability distribution is known. In order to prove the applicability of the new expression, we present the numerical results for the BEP computed using our expression for a full absorption spherical receiver and compare them with the results obtained by particle-based simulations. Our results agree closely with the simulation results.

Molecular-Type Permutation Shift Keying in Molecular MIMO Communications for IoBNT

Molecular communication (MC) is a bio-inspired communication paradigm, which lays the foundation for the Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT) in the medical field. As a high energy-efficient information transfer method, MC via diffusion (MCvD) is envisioned as a promising candidate for IoBNT but suffers from low date rates due to the long tail of the channel impulse response (CIR). To this end, the multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) technique has been introduced to MCvD. However, the intersymbol interference (ISI) and interlink interference (ILI) deteriorate the bit error rate (BER) performance of MIMO MCvD systems. In this article, molecular type permutation shift keying in the space domain (MTPSK-SD) and time-interleaved MTPSK-SD are proposed for MIMO MCvD systems to improve the BER performance by reducing ILI. The principle of MTPSK-SD is further generalized to the spatiotemporal domain, yielding three spatiotemporal modulation schemes, which can provide desirable BER performance without requiring any CIR information in the communication scenarios affected by different levels of ISI and ILI. Two low-complexity detectors are proposed to obtain different tradeoffs between anti-ILI and anti-ISI performance. Furthermore, a complementary coding scheme, which can effectively reduce the ILI under the considered symmetrical system topology, is designed and applied to all the proposed modulation schemes. Additionally, the BER upper bound is analyzed. Numerical simulations on BER corroborate the analysis and show that the proposed schemes are promising multimolecule modulation alternatives, which outperform the existing MIMO MCvD modulation schemes.

Resource Allocation for Multiuser Molecular Communication Systems Oriented to the Internet of Medical Things.

Communication between nanomachines is still an important topic in the construction of the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT). Currently, molecular communication (MC) is expected to be a promising technology to realize IoBNT. To effectively serve the IoBNT composed of multiple nanomachine clusters, it is imperative to study multiple-access MC. In this article, based on the molecular division multiple access technology, we propose a novel multiuser MC system, where information molecules with different diffusion coefficients are first employed. Aiming at the user fairness in the considered system, we investigate the optimization of molecular resource allocation, including the assignment of the types of molecules and the number of molecules of a type. Specifically, three performance metrics are considered, namely, min–max fairness for error probability, max–min fairness for achievable rate, and weighted sum-rate maximization. Moreover, we propose two assignment strategies for types of molecules, i.e., best-to-best (BTB) and best-to-worst (BTW). Subsequently, for a two-user scenario, we analytically derive the optimal allocation for the number of molecules when types of molecules are fixed for all users. In contrast, for a three-user scenario, we prove that the BTB and BTW schemes with the optimal allocation for the number of molecules can provide the lower and upper bounds on system performance, respectively. Finally, numerical results show that the combination of BTW and the optimal allocation for the number of molecules yields better performance than the benchmarks.

Molecular Signal Detection Using Nonlinear Mapping

In diffusion-based molecular communications (MC), information exchange occurs using chemical signaling with diffused molecules following a random trajectory. This random propagation of molecules leads to severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) in MC. In this letter, we propose a nonlinear mapping based low complexity data symbol detection method in MC, by reducing delay profile of the diffusing channel tail to mitigate ISI at the receiver. Further, we optimize the proposed nonlinear mapping method to minimize the ISI. The proposed method is analyzed and compared with the existing methods for ISI mitigation. Numerical analysis of the proposed method is carried out for various MC system’s parameters such as diffusion coefficient and distance. The proposed signal detection can be used on MC-based Internet of bio-nanothings with higher channel capacity and/or lower bit error rate.

On mixing reservoir targeted drug delivery Modeling-based Internet of Bio-NanoThings

Nowadays, the Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT) is playing an important role to become the leading technique used in healthcare delivery systems. The IoBNT is considered a promising paradigm for efficient communication between nanodevices to deliver therapeutic drug molecules and thus achieve the target concentration to the diseased cell/tissue inside intra-body nanonetworks. However, ignoring the physical architecture of these nanodevices may effect on the delivered concentration when employing the IoBNT paradigm. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a spherical transmitter nanodevice, namely reservoir for controlling the drug molecules to be released and showing the effects of the geometry design of such nanodevice on the concentration arrived inside intra-body nanonetwork. Moreover, we present a pharmacokinetic system comprising of a mathematical model for studying the effects and variance in drug concentration, while taking into consideration the distance from the center of the nanotransmitter to the center of the nanoreceiver. The performance analysis of the proposed IoBNT system is numerically investigated. The performance is evaluated by employing the pharmacokinetic model in terms of bio-cyber interface forward and reverse links. The simulation results reveal that the proposed model is able to achieve a high concentration around the targeted cells and thus decrease side effects around healthy cells compared with the state-of-the-art. Additionally, the results illustrate that proposed reservoir is capable of controlling the emission of the therapeutic drug molecules and thus improving the delivery of the dose at target time.

PANACEA: An Internet of Bio-NanoThings Application for Early Detection and Mitigation of Infectious Diseases

The Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT) concept envisions the connection between biological cells and the Internet. The ultimate goal of IoBNT is to catalyze a revolution in biomedical technologies through advances in molecular communication, integrated systems, bio-nanosensors and synthetic biology to improve human health and quality of life. In this paper, an application of IoBNT called PANACEA (a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases in Latin) is presented as a solution for an end-to-end design towards realizing the IoBNT for the first time in the literature. The architecture of PANACEA is tailored to focus on diagnosis and therapy of infectious diseases. In PANACEA, to detect the communication within the cells of the body to deduce infection level, a submilimeter implantable bio-electronic device, a Bio-NanoThing, is proposed. BNT can transmit the detected infection data remotely to a wearable hub/gateway outside of the body. The hub can use mobile devices and the backbone network such as Internet or cellular systems to reach the healthcare providers who can remotely control the BNTs. Hence, PANACEA provides a system, where sensing, actuation and computing processes are tightly coupled to provide a reliable and responsive disease detection and infection recovery system. Incorporating molecular communication and conventional networks brings many challenges that are attacked in various fronts such as circuit and biosensor design, communications engineering, with novel solutions presented in this paper, accompanied with simulation results.

Advancing Modern Healthcare With Nanotechnology, Nanobiosensors, and Internet of Nano Things: Taxonomies, Applications, Architecture, and Challenges

Healthcare sector is probably the most benefited from the applications of nanotechnology. The nanotechnology, in the forms of nanomedicine, nanoimplants, nanobiosensors along with the internet of nano things (IoNT), has the potential to bring a revolutionizing advancement in the field of medicine and healthcare services. The primary aim of this paper is to explore the clinical and medical possibilities of these different implementations of nanotechnology. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of nanotechnology, biosensors, nanobiosensors, and IoNT. Furthermore, multilevel taxonomies of nanotechnology, nanoparticles, biosensors, nanobiosensors, and nanozymes are presented. The potential medical and clinical applications of these technologies are discussed in details with several examples. This paper specifically focuses on IoNT and its role in healthcare. In addition to describing a general architecture of IoNT for healthcare, the communication architecture of the IoNT is also explained. The challenges in the successful realization of IoNT are also discussed critically, along with a special discussion on internet of bio-nano things (IoBNT) and its potential in making IoNT more compatible to human body.

6G and Beyond: The Future of Wireless Communications Systems

6G and beyond will fulfill the requirements of a fully connected world and provide ubiquitous wireless connectivity for all. Transformative solutions are expected to drive the surge for accommodating a rapidly growing number of intelligent devices and services. Major technological breakthroughs to achieve connectivity goals within 6G include: (i) a network operating at the THz band with much wider spectrum resources, (ii) intelligent communication environments that enable a wireless propagation environment with active signal transmission and reception, (iii) pervasive artificial intelligence, (iv) large-scale network automation, (v) an all-spectrum reconfigurable front-end for dynamic spectrum access, (vi) ambient backscatter communications for energy savings, (vii) the Internet of Space Things enabled by CubeSats and UAVs, and (viii) cell-free massive MIMO communication networks. In this roadmap paper, use cases for these enabling techniques as well as recent advancements on related topics are highlighted, and open problems with possible solutions are discussed, followed by a development timeline outlining the worldwide efforts in the realization of 6G. Going beyond 6G, promising early-stage technologies such as the Internet of NanoThings, the Internet of BioNanoThings, and quantum communications, which are expected to have a far-reaching impact on wireless communications, have also been discussed at length in this paper.

A Cross-Layer Approach for Optimization of MolCom Systems Toward the Internet of Bio-NanoThings

Inspired by conventional communication network protocols, a cross-layer approach for the optimization of nanonetwork-based molecular communication (MolCom) systems toward the Internet of Bio-NanoThings is presented in this study. According to the proposed molecular-layered architecture, a molecular link layer-based xor biomolecular switch adopts the transmission rate of a molecular frame for transmission in the next frame, based on the available molecular information in a physical layer. Owing to the MolCom environment dynamics, the frame transmission rate is optimized by computing the bond throughput and is efficiently processed at receiver nanomachines. The performance of the proposed cross-layer approach is modulated by adopting the enzymatic feedback signaling. Additionally, we develop the analysis of the proposed cross-layer approach by using queueing system in terms of molecular frame loss rate. The numerical results, such as the average time delay delivery of molecular frame and the tolerant traffic rate, reveal that the proposed cross-layer approach improves the nanonetwork-based MolCom system considerably.

Abnormality Detection Inside Blood Vessels With Mobile Nanomachines

Motivated by the numerous healthcare applications of molecular communication within Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) paradigm, this paper addresses the problem of abnormality detection in a blood vessel using multiple biological embedded computing devices called cooperative biological nanomachines (CNs), and a common receiver called the fusion center (FC). Due to blood flow inside a vessel, each CN and the FC are assumed to be mobile. In this paper, each CN performs abnormality detection with certain probabilities of detection and false alarm. The CNs report their local decisions to an FC over a diffusion-advection blood flow channel using different types of molecules in the presence of inter-symbol interference, multi-source interference, and counting errors. The FC employs the OR and AND logic-based fusion rules to make the final decision after decoding the local decisions using the sub-optimal detectors based on the approximation of the log-likelihood ratio. For the aforementioned system, probabilities of detection, and false alarm at the FC are derived. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the derived analytical results, which provide important insights.

Modeling convection-diffusion-reaction systems for microfluidic molecular communications with surface-based receivers in Internet of Bio-Nano Things.

We consider a microfluidic molecular communication (MC) system, where the concentration-encoded molecular messages are transported via fluid flow-induced convection and diffusion, and detected by a surface-based MC receiver with ligand receptors placed at the bottom of the microfluidic channel. The overall system is a convection-diffusion-reaction system that can only be solved by numerical methods, e.g., finite element analysis (FEA). However, analytical models are key for the information and communication technology (ICT), as they enable an optimisation framework to develop advanced communication techniques, such as optimum detection methods and reliable transmission schemes. In this direction, we develop an analytical model to approximate the expected time course of bound receptor concentration, i.e., the received signal used to decode the transmitted messages. The model obviates the need for computationally expensive numerical methods by capturing the nonlinearities caused by laminar flow resulting in parabolic velocity profile, and finite number of ligand receptors leading to receiver saturation. The model also captures the effects of reactive surface depletion layer resulting from the mass transport limitations and moving reaction boundary originated from the passage of finite-duration molecular concentration pulse over the receiver surface. Based on the proposed model, we derive closed form analytical expressions that approximate the received pulse width, pulse delay and pulse amplitude, which can be used to optimize the system from an ICT perspective. We evaluate the accuracy of the proposed model by comparing model-based analytical results to the numerical results obtained by solving the exact system model with COMSOL Multiphysics.

An Information Theoretical Analysis of Human Insulin-Glucose System Toward the Internet of Bio-Nano Things.

Molecular communication is an important tool to understand biological communications with many promising applications in Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT). The insulin-glucose system is of key significance among the major intra-body nanonetworks, since it fulfills metabolic requirements of the body. The study of biological networks from information and communication theoretical (ICT) perspective is necessary for their introduction in the IoBNT framework. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to provide and analyze for the first time in the literature, a simple molecular communication model of the human insulin-glucose system from ICT perspective. The data rate, channel capacity, and the group propagation delay are analyzed for a two-cell network between a pancreatic beta cell and a muscle cell that are connected through a capillary. The results point out a correlation between an increase in insulin resistance and a decrease in the data rate and channel capacity, an increase in the insulin transmission rate, and an increase in the propagation delay. We also propose applications for the introduction of the system in the IoBNT framework. Multi-cell insulin glucose system models may be based on this simple model to help in the investigation, diagnosis, and treatment of insulin resistance by means of novel IoBNT applications.

Quo vadis, humanity? Ethics on the last mile toward cybernetic organism

ABSTRACTMotivated by the recent decisive progress in the field of the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT), and fueled by the growing social importance of emerging services and applications built on top of it, this paper seeks to understand consequences of seamless integration of out-of-body and inside-the-body nanoscale devices with a human, that is, creation of augmented human. Absence of regulatory and legal principles designed to protect humans and the environment from negative impact and non-rational use of new technologies threatens the natural human essence. In this paper, we analyze what IoBNT potentially brings to humanity, analyze some fragments of a post-human future, and think about possible issues an augmented human may experience in his/her mental life.

Internet of Bionano-Things: Perspective and Future Directions

Internet of Bionano-Things: Perspective and Future Directions

Biologically Inspired Bio-Cyber Interface Architecture and Model for Internet of Bio-NanoThings Applications

With the advent of nanotechnology, concepts related to the Internet of Things, such as the Internet of NanoThings and Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT) have also emerged in the classical literature. The main concern of this paper is the IoBNT, which projects the prospective application domain where the activities of very tiny, biocompatible, and non-intrusive devices operating in an in-body nanonetwork can be monitored and controlled through the Internet. In this paper, we present an illustrative scenario and system model of an IoBNT for application in an advanced healthcare delivery system. To address one of the major challenges of the IoBNT, we present an exemplary architecture and model of a bio-cyber interface for connecting the conventional electromagnetic-based Internet to the biochemical signaling-based bionanonetwork. The bio-cyber interface is designed and modeled by employing biological concepts, such as the responsiveness of certain biomolecules to thermal and light stimuli, and the bioluminescence phenomenon of some biochemical reactions. The analysis in this paper focuses on the system that comprises the bio-cyber interface and the information propagation network of the blood vessel that leads to the in-body nanonetwork location. The effects of the system and design parameters associated with the IoBNT models presented are numerically evaluated.

The internet of Bio-Nano things

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become an important research topic in the last decade, where things refer to interconnected machines and objects with embedded computing capabilities employed to extend the Internet to many application domains. While research and development continue for general IoT devices, there are many application domains where very tiny, concealable, and non-intrusive Things are needed. The properties of recently studied nanomaterials, such as graphene, have inspired the concept of Internet of NanoThings (IoNT), based on the interconnection of nanoscale devices. Despite being an enabler for many applications, the artificial nature of IoNT devices can be detrimental where the deployment of NanoThings could result in unwanted effects on health or pollution. The novel paradigm of the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) is introduced in this paper by stemming from synthetic biology and nanotechnology tools that allow the engineering of biological embedded computing devices. Based on biological cells, and their functionalities in the biochemical domain, Bio-NanoThings promise to enable applications such as intra-body sensing and actuation networks, and environmental control of toxic agents and pollution. The IoBNT stands as a paradigm-shifting concept for communication and network engineering, where novel challenges are faced to develop efficient and safe techniques for the exchange of information, interaction, and networking within the biochemical domain, while enabling an interface to the electrical domain of the Internet.