Ca2+-signaling-based molecular communication systems: Design and future research directions

Nanomedicine is revolutionizing current methods for diagnosing, treatment and prevention of diseases with the integration of molecular biology, biotechnology as well as nanotechnology for sensing and actuation capabilities at the molecular scale using nanoscale devices, namely nanomachines. While numerous examples of these applications have been tested in vivo, the real deployments are far from reality. Limitations in controlling, monitoring, miniaturization, and computing inhibit access and manipulation of information at the nano-scale. Integrating communication and networking functionalities provide new opportunities for such challenges with the newly introduced Molecular Communications. These natural communication systems are found with plurality inside the human body. The current challenge is to utilize these natural systems to create artificial biocompatible communication networks that can interconnect multiple nanomachines in multiple parts of the body and connected to the cloud, is defined as the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT). Nanonetworks inside cellular tissues perform communication using a signaling process such as Ca2+. This specifically signaling process is very important for many regulatory functions in tissues and its control and communication is crucial to allow nanomedicine capabilities towards diagnosis and treatments of diseases at the nano-scale. This paper presents a review of techniques that enable the design of the Ca2+-signaling-based molecular communication system for cellular tissues, essential tools for its deployment, application and, lastly, the research future direction in this field. In the end, one must acquire the sufficient knowledge to understand both biological and telecommunication concepts that encompass this technology to bring it further.