Sasitharan Balasubramaniam

Towards autonomic management of communications networks

As communications networks become increasingly dynamic, heterogeneous, less reliable, and larger in scale, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to effectively manage these networks using traditional approaches that rely on human monitoring and intervention to ensure they operate within desired bounds. Researchers and practitioners are pursuing the vision of autonomic network management, which we view as the capability of network entities to self-govern their behavior within the constraints of business goals that the network as a whole seeks to achieve. However, applying autonomic principles to network management is challenging for a number of reasons, including: (1) A means is required to enable business rules to determine the set of resources and/or services to be provided. (2) Contextual changes in the network must be sensed and interpreted, because new management policies may be required when context changes. (3) As context changes, it may be necessary to adapt the management control loops that are used to ensure that system functionality adapts to meet changing user requirements, business goals, and environmental conditions. (4) A means is required to verify modeled data and to add new data dynamically so that the system can learn and reason about itself and its environment. This article provides an introduction to the FOCALE autonomic network management architecture, which is designed to address these challenges.

Body area nanonetworks with molecular communications in nanomedicine

Recent developments in nano and biotechnology enable promising therapeutic nanomachines (NMs) that operate on inter- or intracellular area of human body. The networks of such therapeutic NMs, body area nanonetworks (BAN2s), also empower sophisticated nanomedicine applications. In these applications, therapeutic NMs share information to perform computation and logic operations, and make decisions to treat complex diseases. Hence, one of the most challenging subjects for these sophisticated applications is the realization of BAN2 through a nanoscale communication paradigm. In this article, we introduce the concept of a BAN2 with molecular communication, where messenger molecules are used as communication carrier from a sender to a receiver NM. The current state of the art of molecular communication and BAN2 in nanomedicine applications is first presented. Then communication theoretical efforts are reviewed, and open research issues are given. The objective of this work is to introduce this novel and interdisciplinary research field and highlight major barriers toward its realization from the viewpoint of communication theory.

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.

Realizing the Internet of Nano Things: Challenges, Solutions, and Applications

Embedding nanosensors in the environment would add a new dimension to the Internet of Things, but realizing the IoNT vision will require developing new communication paradigms and overcoming various technical obstacles.

Multi-Hop Conjugation Based Bacteria Nanonetworks

Molecular communication is a new paradigm for nanomachines to exchange information, by utilizing biological mechanism and/or components to transfer information (e.g., molecular diffusion, neuronal networks, molecular motors). One possible approach for molecular communication is through the use of bacteria, which can act as carriers for DNA-based information, i.e., plasmids. This paper analyzes multi-hop molecular nanonetworks that utilize bacteria as a carrier. The proposed approach combines different properties of bacteria to enable multi-hop transmission, such as conjugation and chemotaxis-based motility. Various analyses have been performed, including the correlation between the success rate of plasmid delivery to the destination node, and the role of conjugation in enabling this; as well as analyses on the impact of large topology shapes (e.g., Grid, Random, and Scale-free) on the success rate of plasmid delivery for multiple source-destination nanonetworks. A further solution proposed in this paper is the application of antibiotics to act as filters on illegitimate messages that could be delivered by the bacteria. Our evaluation, which has been conducted through a series of simulations, has shown that numerous bacteria properties fit to properties required for communication networking (e.g., packet filtering, routing, addressing).

Opportunistic routing through conjugation in bacteria communication nanonetwork

Abstract As the field of molecular communication continues to grow, numerous solutions have been proposed to enable communication between nanomachines. Amongst these solutions, bacteria communication nanonetworks has been proposed as a promising approach for molecular communication. This is driven by a number of attractive properties found in bacteria, which includes biased motility toward the destination through chemotaxis process, as well as the ability of bacteria to transfer genetic information between each other using conjugation. Bacterial conjugation is a major mechanism for Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT) that enables information transfer among bacteria. In this paper, we propose an opportunistic routing process in bacteria communication network using these two properties. The paper presents the simulation work to analyze the performance of message delivery for three different topology shapes, which includes grid, hexagon, and T-shape topologies. The aim of simulating on different shape topologies is to determine the impact that conjugation will have to improve message delivery. In all topologies, the use of conjugation helped improve the reliability of message delivery to the destination point. The paper will analyze various commonly used metrics used in communication networks, such as the average delay, the number of messages, as well as the distribution of messages and their originating node. The conjugation process is most beneficial in complexed shaped topologies, where the directionality from the source to the destination is a number of hops apart, as represented in the T-shape topology.

Human activity recognition in pervasive health-care: Supporting efficient remote collaboration

Technological advancements, including advancements in the medical field have drastically improved our quality of life, thus pushing life expectancy increasingly higher. This has also had the effect of increasing the number of elderly population. More than ever, health-care institutions must now care for a large number of elderly patients, which is one of the contributing factors in the rising health-care costs. Rising costs have prompted hospitals and other health-care institutions to seek various cost-cutting measures in order to remain competitive. One avenue being explored lies in the technological advancements that can make hospital working environments much more efficient. Various communication technologies, mobile computing devices, micro-embedded devices and sensors have the ability to support medical staff efficiency and improve health-care systems. In particular, one promising application of these technologies is towards deducing medical staff activities. Having this continuous knowledge about health-care staff activities can provide medical staff with crucial information of particular patients, interconnect with other supporting applications in a seamless manner (e.g. a doctor diagnosing a patient can automatically be sent the patients lab report from the pathologist), a clear picture of the time utilisation of doctors and nurses and also enable remote virtual collaboration between activities, thus creating a strong base for establishment of an efficient collaborative environment. In this paper, we describe our activity recognition system that in conjunction with our efficiency mechanism has the potential to cut down health-care costs by making the working environments more efficient. Initially, we outline the activity recognition process that has the ability to infer user activities based on the self-organisation of surrounding objects that user may manipulate. We then use the activity recognition information to enhance virtual collaboration in order to improve overall efficiency of tasks within a hospital environment. We have analysed a number of medical staff activities to guide our simulation setup. Our results show an accurate activity recognition process for individual users with respect to their behaviour. At the same time we support remote virtual collaboration through tasks allocation process between doctors and nurses with results showing maximum efficiency within the resource constraints.

Development of artificial neuronal networks for molecular communication

Communication at the nanoscale can enhance capabilities for nanodevices, and at the same time open new opportunities for numerous healthcare applications. One approach toward enabling communication between nanodevices is through molecular communications. While a number of solutions have been proposed for molecular communication (e.g. calcium signaling, molecular motors, bacteria communication), in this paper, we propose the use of neuronal networks for molecular communication network. In particular, we provide two design aspects of neuron networks, which includes, (i) the design of an interface between nanodevice and neurons that can initiate signaling, and (ii) the design of transmission scheduling to ensure that signals initiated by multiple devices will successfully reach the receiver with minimum interference. The solution for (i) is developed through wet lab experiments, while the solution for (ii) is developed through genetic algorithm optimization technique, and is validated through simulations.

Biologically inspired self-governance and self-organisation for autonomic networks

The current complexity of network management has helped drive the need for autonomic capabilities. The vision of autonomic network management provides the ability for network devices to cooperatively self-organise and self-govern in the support of high level business goals. These principles are inspired by biological systems. In this paper, we propose key self-organisation and self-governance techniques that are drawn from principles of molecular biology including (i) blood glucose homeostasis, (ii) reaction diffusion like principles, (iii) microorganism mobility using chemotaxis techniques, and (iv) hormone signaling. Preliminary simulation results have also been presented to validate our model.

Biological principles for future internet architecture design

Currently, a large number of activities on Internet redesign are being discussed in the research community. While todays Internet was initially planned as a datagram-oriented communication network among research facilities, it has grown and evolved to accommodate unexpected diversity in services and applications. For the future Internet this trend is anticipated to continue even more. Such developments demand that the architecture of the new-generation Internet be designed in a dynamic, modular, and adaptive way. Features like these can often be observed in biological processes that serve as inspiration for designing new cooperative architectural concepts. Our contribution in this article is twofold. First, unlike previous discussions on biologically inspired network control mechanisms, we do not limit ourselves to a single method, but consider ecosystems and coexisting environments of entities that can cooperate based on biological principles. Second, we illustrate our grand view by not only taking inspiration from biology in the design process, but also sketching a possible way to implement biologically driven control in a future Internet architecture.