Nanonetworking Testbed SW Platform Design
Nanonetworking is an emerging research field that focuses on communications between nanomachines. Nanoscale physics renders traditional electromagnetic communication mechanisms useless; therefore, novel approaches are required. Molecular Communications (MC), thanks to the help of the evolution of biological organisms, offers the most promising approach in Nanonetworking. Visit our Nanonetworking Research Group (NRG) website at http://nrg.boun.edu.tr for details.
The idea in MC is to transfer the messages by encoding the information on a feature of a wave of messenger molecules, as opposed to utilizing amplitude/frequency/phase features of an electromagnetic wave. The molecules typically propagate in the environment subject to diffusion (a.k.a. Brownian Motion). This type of communication is known as Molecular Communication via Diffusion (MCvD). The main reason why MCvD stands out among other approaches is that it serves both as a stand-alone means of communication as well as constituting the basis of many other approaches.
Performing experiments at the nanoscale is a quite difficult task. At Boğaziçi University, we are lucky to have the second "Molecular MIMO Testbed" in the world, developed by our South Korean partner at Yonsei University. Most of the prior work in the Molecular Communications domain has been implemented using simulations.
In this project, you are expected to re-design the software development platform for the testbed. improve the performance of the testbed and implement a new application scenario in MCvD. The testbed consists of micro-controllers for transmitter and receiver. First, you will be drawing UML diagrams (e.g., use-cases, flow diagram) of the testbed code (i.e., transmitter and receiver codes) and re-implementing backend and frontend of the testbed application. Afterwards, based on our discussions, you will be implementing a novel or existing algorithm on the MCvD testbed. If an existing algorithm is selected, the student is expected to improve the quality of the communication by improving the selected algorithm.