IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOBIOSCIENCE, VOL. 13, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2014

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Guest Editorial Special Section on Molecular Communication Tadashi Nakano, Member, IEEE, and Athanasios V. Vasilakos, Senior Member, IEEE

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OLECULAR COMMUNICATION is an emerging communication paradigm for biological nanomachines (or bio-nanomachines) to form a functional network at the nano-to-micro scale. In molecular communication, a large number of autonomous and distributed bio-nanomachines communicate and coordinate by propagating molecules in the environment. Since nano-to-micro scale networks of bio-nanomachines are able to operate closely with biological systems in a massively parallel and energy efficient manner, their application to areas and domains, to which traditional communication technology may not be directly applicable, are anticipated. In this Special Section, we solicited original papers describing information and communication theoretic approaches to molecular communication. After two rounds of peer reviews, we have selected 9 papers that represent the state-of-the-art of this area. As briefly summarized below, these selected papers together address important open research issues in molecular communication including architecture design, performance evaluation, and application development, where information and communication theoretic approaches are often employed. In the first paper in this Special Section, “Molecular Communication Among Biological Nanomachines: A Layered Architecture and Research Issues,” Nakano et al. apply the layering concept, traditionally used in communications engineering, to decompose complex molecular communication functionality into a set of manageable layers. The authors then describe, for each layer of molecular communication, a descriptive model, basic functionalities, and open research issues. The authors of this paper set an important starting-point for the research community to discuss and ultimately develop the standard architecture of molecular communication. In the second paper of this Special Section, “Security and Privacy in Molecular Communication and Networking: Opportunities and Challenges,” Loscrí et al. addresses the security and privacy aspects, in terms of issues and challenges, in the context of the Molecular Communication (MC) paradigm. The authors propose specific potential solutions that can be considered and that could be able to face the peculiarities of the MC paradigm, by analyzing their capabilities to meet specific requirements. The authors give some insights by outlining the main potentially directions to develop security and privacy techniques. The common point of all the potential solutions considered and analyzed is represented by their bio-inspired characteristic. The following five papers address fundamental issues in molecular communication in various types of molecular communication. The first three papers consider the most basic type of molecular communication that is based on the diffusion or Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TNB.2014.2347579

random walk of information-carrying molecules. In the paper “A Comprehensive Study of Sampling-Based Optimum Signal Detection in Concentration-Encoded Molecular Communication,” Mahfuz et al. apply signal processing techniques to evaluate the performance of concentration-encoded molecular communication. Here information is encoded in the amplitude or the number of information molecules to be released from the sender of molecular communication. The authors then develop a sampling-based receiver and evaluate the performance in terms of the number of samples per symbol, communication range, and transmission data rate. In the paper “Symbol Interval Optimization for Molecular Communication With Drift,” Kim et al. propose a symbol interval optimization algorithm for molecular communication with drift. Symbol intervals are an important parameter in practical communication systems that affects data rates and error rates. The authors of this paper discuss a trade-off between symbol intervals and inter-symbol interference (ISI) in molecular communication. The authors identify proper symbol intervals considering the ISI inside two kinds of blood vessels, and also suggest no ISI system for strong drift models. Finally, the authors apply an isomer-based molecule shift keying to calculate achievable data transmission rates and compare the data rates obtained from on-symbol ISI and no ISI systems. In the paper “Modeling CD40-based Molecular Communications in Blood Vessels,” Felicetti et al. present a mathematical model to characterize molecular communication between platelets and endothelial cells via CD40 signaling during the initial phases of atherosclerosis. The authors first demonstrate through laboratory experimentation that the release of soluble CD40L molecules from platelets in a fluid medium is enough to trigger expression of adhesion molecules on endothelial cells surface; that is, physical contact between the platelets and the endothelial cells is not necessary. The authors then propose the mathematical model of this type of molecular communication, and quantify the model parameters by matching the experiment results to the model. Their combined approaches of experiments and simulation-based analysis make an important step in the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. The remaining two papers about the fundamental aspects of molecular communication consider different types of molecular communication where communication is performed through neuronal signaling and energy transfer, respectively. In the paper “A Nonparametric Stochastic Optimizer for TDMA-based Neuronal Signaling,” Suzuki et al. formulate a noisy multiobjective optimization problem for a TDMA-based neuronal signaling protocol and solve the problem with a noise-aware stochastic optimizer that leverages an evolutionary algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed optimizer efficiently obtains quality TDMA signaling schedules with

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOBIOSCIENCE, VOL. 13, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2014

acceptable computational costs and operates a TDMA protocol by balancing conflicting objectives in noisy environments. In the paper “A Communication Theoretical Analysis of FRET-based Mobile Ad Hoc Molecular Nanonetworks,” Kuscu and Akan investigate the network of mobile nanomachines communicating through Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET). The authors introduce two novel mobile molecular nanonetworks: FRET-based mobile molecular sensor/actor nanonetwork (FRET-MSAN) which is a distributed system of mobile flurophores acting as sensor or actor nodes; and FRET-based mobile and ad hoc molecular nanonetwork (FRET-MANET) which consists of flurophore-based nanotransmitter, nanoreceivers and nanorelays. The authors then model the single message propagation based on birth-death processes with continuous time Markov chains. The authors also evaluate the performance of FRET-MSAN and FRET-MANNET in terms of successful transmission probability and mean extinction time of the messages, system throughput, channel capacity and achievable communication rates. Finally, the last two papers in this Special Section present how molecular communication may apply to nanomedicine, a promising application area of molecular communication. In the paper “Cooperative Target Tracking by a Mobile Bionanosensor Network,” Okaie et al. design a system of bio-nanomachines for target localization and tracking. The designed system assumes that bio-nanomachines are autonomous and mobile. In simulation experiments, the authors demonstrate that a group of bio-nanomachines is able to locate and track moving targets successfully when a set of parameter values for molecular communication is properly tuned.

In the paper “Using Information Metrics and Molecular Communication to Detect Cellular Tissue Deformation,” Barros et al. propose a classifier system made of bio-nanomachines for detecting structural changes in tissues. Bio-nanomachines in this system communicate through calcium signaling. The system of bio-nanomachines then uses information theoretic measures to infer the tissue structure. The authors show through simulation studies that the proposed system achieves 80% of accuracy in detecting structural changes in tissues. As summarized above, the 9 selected papers collectively address important open research questions in molecular communication associated with overall architectural design, fundamental physical properties and practical applications. The collection of the selected papers highlight recent research results in molecular communication, and in addition, it provides a point of reference for further research. To conclude the editorial remarks, we would like to thank Prof. Michael Hughes, the prior Editor-in-Chief of IEEE TRANSACTIONS OF NANOBIOSCIENCE to allow us to organize the Special Section on this timely topic, as well as all authors and reviewers who contributed to this Special Section. TADASHI NAKANO, Guest Editor Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences Osaka University Osaka, 565-0871 Japan ATHANASIOS V. VASILAKOS, Guest Editor Department of Computer and Telecommunications Engineering University of Western Macedonia Kozani, Greece

Tadashi Nakano received his Ph.D. degree in information systems engineering from Osaka University, Japan, in 2002. He later worked in the Department of Computer Science, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, where he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar from 2002 to 2007 and an Assistant Adjunct Professor from 2007 to 2009. From 2009 to 2013, he was an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. Since 2013, he has been an Associate Adjunct Professor of the Institute of Academic Initiatives, Osaka University, and a Guest Associate Professor of the Graduate School of Biological Sciences, Osaka University. His research interests are in the areas of network applications and distributed computing systems with strong emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. His current research is focused on Biological-ICT (Information and Communications Technology) including design, implementation, and evaluation of biologically inspired systems and synthetic biological systems. Athanasios V. Vasilakos is currently Professor at University of Western Macedonia, Greece. He has authored or co-authored over 200 technical papers in major international journals and conferences. He is author/coauthor of five books and 20 book chapters in the areas of communications. Prof. Vasilakos has served as General Chair, Technical Program Committee Chair for many international conferences. He served or is serving as an Editor or/and Guest Editor for many technical journals, such as the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION AND FORENSICS SECURITY (TIFS), IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CLOUD COMPUTING (TCC), IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NETWORK AND SERVICES MANAGEMENT, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS, PART B: CYBERNETICS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIOMEDICINE, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTERS, ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS special issues of May 2009, January 2011, and March 2011, IEEE Communications Magazine, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks (WINET), ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET). He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Adaptive and Autonomous Communications Systems (IJAACS) and the International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART). He is General Chair of the Council of Computing of the European Alliances for Innovation.

Guest editorial. Special section on molecular communication.

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