Incorporating bacterial properties for plasmid delivery in nano sensor networks

The new paradigm of molecular communication aims to utilize biological components and systems for developing communication systems. One promising candidate for molecular communication is the use of bacteria to carry information between different nanomachines. However, there is a lack of connection between molecular communication and the design of nanomachines for payload delivery. Utilizing molecular communication to support the transport of payload will further ensure high reliability of delivery to the targeted location. In this paper, we propose the use of bacteria to carry information (which is encoded into plasmids) for a nano sensor network application. We base the structure of the sensor nanomachine compartments on solutions that have been developed and experimentally validated, and utilize a number of bacterial properties to pick up the plasmids and deliver them to a target. This paper presents the analytical and numerical models for the each of the processes as well as their combination, in particular focusing on the end-to-end delay and reliability for the transfer of information. Extensive analysis have been conducted for the proposed approach by varying a number of parameters (e.g., quantity of bacteria, area of deployment, and number of target sites) to determine the overall system performance.