Bio-Internet of Things Through Micro-Circulation Network: A Molecular Communication Channel Modeling
Guodong Yue, Qiang Liu, Kun Yang
Abstract
The future of the Internet of Things (IoT) holds great promise, particularly in the realm of healthcare, where the concept of Bio-IoT (B-IoT) has gained significant attention. B-IoT involves the coordination of monitoring and treatment within the human body using bio-implants that require communication. However, how to efficiently communicate among bio-implants is seldom studied. Molecular communication (MC), which uses molecules as information carriers, is a novel communication method of nano-devices for its excellent bio-compatibility and low energy consumption. In every part of the body, there is a micro-circulation network (MCN) responsible for substance exchange which can be utilized as a channel to deliver information efficiently by bio-implants. However, since the structure of MCN is complicated and the characteristics of blood flow vary, there is not yet a mature channel modeling on MCN, making it impossible to design and evaluate the performance of B-IoT. In this article, we address the need for efficient communication channels in B-IoT by exploring the potential of MCNs in MC. We have fully analyzed the characteristics of MCN and blood flow and derived the mathematical model of channel impulse response. We also built a simple end-to-end communication model based on MCN and analyzed its error probability and mutual information from a communication perspective. The numerical results have shown that MCN is an effective communication channel of MC for B-IoT in the scale of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and mm.