Page 179 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

THE IEEE 1906.1 STANDARD: NANOCOMMUNICATIONS AS A NEW SOURCE OF DATA

Sebastian Canovas-Carrasco, Antonio-Javier Garcia-Sanchez, Joan Garcia-Haro

Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Technical University of Cartagena,
Cartagena, Spain.
Emails: sebas.canovas@upct.es, antoniojavier.garcia@upct.es, joang.haro@upct.es

ABSTRACT information. Nowadays, the IoT relies on the well-known
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), in which numerous
Nanoscale communications is a new paradigm devices with limited resources are connected, in order to
encompassing all those concerns related to the exchange of provide feasible solutions in multiple heterogeneous fields,
information among devices at the nanometer scale. A such as agriculture, industry, smart cities, etc. Keeping in
network infrastructure consisting of a huge amount of mind the way WSN operate and due to incessant
nano-devices is envisaged to ensure robust, reliable and technological advances, novel devices with progressively
coordinated data transmission. This will enable a plethora smaller dimensions are being developed, to ease their
of forthcoming applications and services in many different integration into the environment. However, as they become
research fields, such as personalized medicine, synthetic smaller, many concerns, such as available energy,
biology, environmental science or industry, which will lead transmission range or data processing capacity are far more
to outstanding and unprecedented advances. The IEEE restricted than in traditional WSN. Thus, when the scale of
P1906.1 standard provides a conceptual and general these tiny devices decreases to nanometers, a new paradigm
framework to set the starting point for future developments arises, nanoscale communications between nanomachines,
in nanoscale communication networks. This paper reviews and between nanomachines and more conventional devices
the latest IEEE P1906.1 recommendations, observing their in the network.
main features when applied to the electromagnetic (EM) These data-driven nanodevices have become a topic of
nanocommunication area. We contribute by identifying and increasing interest for the scientific community, since they
discussing the principal shortcomings of the standard, to would be able to gather physical parameters at the
which further research efforts must be devoted. We also nanoscale with outstanding accuracy. This capacity would
provide interesting guidelines for focusing the object of allow the monitoring of scenarios not explored to date,
future investigations. enabling a plethora of potential applications in fields as
varied as biomedicine, synthetic biology, environmental
Keywords — Nanoscale communication networks, science or industry, among many others. Indeed, one of the
nanodevices, EM nanocommunications, terahertz band, most promising applications of these nanodevices is aimed
IEEE standards. at improving medicine, because diverse medical tests, such
as blood pressure, virus detection or oxygen levels in blood
1. INTRODUCTION (Figure 1), could be collected in vivo and directly
transmitted to medical personnel (e.g. information about the
In the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), objects are variation in number and size of cancer cells will be received
expected to be able to sense and capture the physical by the oncologist).
variables of their surroundings (e.g. temperature, humidity, Several works have dealt with how nanodevices should
pressure, etc.) as well as to process the acquired information communicate with each other. This is becoming a critical
and communicate it wirelessly to any other object/node in issue, since the extremely limited resources of nanodevices
their network. These enhanced objects integrate small require them to work cooperatively to carry out a useful
sensing/computing/communicating devices in a varied range application. Two main alternatives for communicating at the
of sizes, including the nanoscale. Moreover, devices in IoT nanoscale have been envisaged so far, electromagnetic
constitute a network infrastructure connecting both physical (EM) and molecular communication.
and virtual worlds by means of all sorts of innovative EM communication is based on the use of electromagnetic
applications and services, some of them currently waves to transmit a message between two nanodevices.
unimaginable. In this context, a huge amount of data will be Advancements in carbon electronics, mainly those devices
generated and should be properly managed to extract useful made of graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNT), have
played a key role in the development of a new generation of
This work has been supported by the project AIM, ref. electronic nanocomponents, such as nanoantennas or
TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R (AEI/FEDER, UE).

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