Achieving in-phase synchronization in a diffusion-based nanonetwork with unknown propagation delay

Abstract

In this paper, the feasibility of achieving in-phase synchronization in a diffusion-based nanonetwork using a two-way message exchange is studied and investigated. Nanomachines are equipped with biochemical oscillators that provide and maintain timing information. Overtime, the oscillators tend to have clock offsets which results in desynchronization. The proposed two-way message exchange synchronization scheme aims to mitigate these clock offsets, but without the explicit use of time-stamps. Instead, the intrinsic characteristic of the biochemical oscillator to be able to modify its oscillations in response to a chemical signal is taken into account. This allows the clock offsets of the oscillator to converge and achieve in-phase synchronization. Computer simulations are performed to analyze the accuracy and the synchronization error. Further investigations were carried out to study the effect of propagation delay on the performance of the proposed scheme.