Networks of bacteria colonies: A new framework for reliable molecular communication networking

The prospect of new biological and industrial applications that require communication in micro-scale, encourages research on the design of bio-compatible communication networks using networking primitives already available in nature. One of the most promising candidates for constructing such networks is to adapt and engineer specific types of bacteria that are capable of sensing, actuation, and above all, communication with each other. In this paper, we present networking of bacteria colonies via molecular communication in a diffusion channel. The node in the network itself is a population of bacteria; as an individual bacterium (biological agent) is a tiny unreliable element with limited capabilities. Each single bacterium in the population senses a parameter of interest (e.g., a chemical) and reacts accordingly. The overall response of the bacteria population in a node is transferred to the next node in the network and sensed by its bacteria. We model the transmission and reception process of each individual bacteria through which we obtain the overall functionality of a node. Two scenarios are discussed as examples. Specifically, we will consider a line network formed by these nodes. We will study transfer of information and also present some results on the practical signaling, reliability, and latency in such a multihop line network. We will also study the consensus problem in a uniformly distributed network and show how the nodes can reach a common estimate for a particular parameter in the environment.