Kaikai Zhu;Sümeyye Carkit-Yilmaz;Bastian Heinlein;Y Lan Pham;Vahid Jamali;Robert Schober;Helene M. Loos;Andrea Buettner
{"title":"Experimental Characterization of Impact of Paint-Like Solvent Backgrounds on Indoor Airborne Molecular Communication","authors":"Kaikai Zhu;Sümeyye Carkit-Yilmaz;Bastian Heinlein;Y Lan Pham;Vahid Jamali;Robert Schober;Helene M. Loos;Andrea Buettner","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3720576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3720576","url":null,"abstract":"Airborne molecular communication (AMC) systems are often subjected to persistent interfering volatile organic compounds (VOCs) originating from paints and coated surfaces in indoor environments. These background chemicals, together with the actively released signaling molecules, affect the outputs of typical non-specific sensors such as metal oxide (MOX) sensors because of cross-sensitivity, creating drifting sensor-output baselines, and memory-dependent effects that have not yet been systematically considered in experimental AMC studies. This study experimentally investigates how a common paint solvent (n-butyl acetate) and alcohol signaling pulses (ethanol) jointly affect an AMC system with MOX sensors. Using a static chamber and a controlled-airflow setup, we examine ethanol pulses in clean air, solvent backgrounds, superimposed signal-background conditions, and different exposure sequences. The measurements show that paint-related VOCs cause slowly varying baseline shifts that reduce ethanol pulse contrast, slow down recovery, and introduce exposure sequence dependent responses. This letter provides an experimental characterization of solvent-background interference and memory effects in MOX sensor-based AMC receivers.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"952-957"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11643254","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148925135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Qianqian Wang;Tao Chen;Chen Chen;Xuan Chen;Kai Lv;Qingtao Cui
{"title":"A CNN-SE-BiLSTM Detection Model for Ultrasonic Wideband Signals Over Intra-Body Fading Channels","authors":"Qianqian Wang;Tao Chen;Chen Chen;Xuan Chen;Kai Lv;Qingtao Cui","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3730007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3730007","url":null,"abstract":"To enable safe and reliable intra-body communication (IBC) for medical applications, ultrasonic wideband (UsWB) technology employs low-duty-cycle pulses with time-hopping spread spectrum to effectively mitigate multipath and thermal effects. However, transient waveform distortion and multipath delay spread, which are induced by the inhomogeneity of the human body, render UsWB signals difficult to detect. This paper proposes a Squeeze-and-Excitation channel attention mechanism-based hybrid convolutional neural network and bidirectional long short-term memory (CNN-SE-BiLSTM) model for the detection of UsWB signals, in which a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) is used to capture multi-scale spatial features, the attention mechanism is employed to mitigate the impact of noise through adaptive feature recalibration, and the back-end bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network is designed to model the global temporal dependencies of pulses in complex intra-body environments. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are conducted to compare the bit-error rate (BER) performance of various deep learning-based detection models, including CNN, LSTM, CNN-LSTM, Transformer, and the proposed CNN-SE-BiLSTM, against traditional matched filter and energy detection receivers over intra-body fading channels. Simulation results demonstrate that the CNN-SE-BiLSTM model maintains a Flash size below 1 MB with a peak RAM usage of 280 KB and achieves the lowest BER among the evaluated schemes, offering a promising detection solution for UsWB-based IBC systems.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"958-968"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148925289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"End-to-End Modeling of Plant-to-Plant Communication via Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds","authors":"Mirko Genoni;Gabriele Lecce;Sufian Kuriry;Karthik Reddy Gorla;Maurizio Magarini;Silvia Mura","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3721765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3721765","url":null,"abstract":"Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) mediate stress signaling among plants through airborne transport and plant uptake. This letter presents a unified end-to-end model integrating: (i) time-resolved stress-induced emissions calibrated using drought–herbivory interaction data; (ii) atmospheric propagation modeled as a superposition of Gaussian puffs with stability-dependent Pasquill–Briggs dispersion; and (iii) receiver-side plant uptake as a dynamic accumulation process. Results show that near-field effects can cause concentration deviations up to 2–<inline-formula> <tex-math>$5times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> when using far-field models, highlighting the need for accurate short-range propagation. At the system level, atmospheric dilution governs signal amplitude, while uptake integration enhances persistence under sustained stress, enabling reliable detection up to ~1.5 m under moderate wind conditions. The proposed framework provides a physically consistent and biologically interpretable basis for analyzing BVOC-mediated plant communication and predicting signaling range under realistic environmental variability.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"947-951"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148928395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Early-Stage Disease Detection via Intravascular Nanomachines: Modeling and Analysis","authors":"Abdollah Rezagholi;Sergi Abadal;Filip Lemic;Eduard Alarcón;Ethungshan Shitiri","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3732983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3732983","url":null,"abstract":"Early-stage disease detection remains challenging due to the low abundance of circulating biomarkers during the initial stages of disease. Among emerging technologies, intra-body nanoscale communication offers an innovative solution to identify molecular cues within the human bloodstream. This study investigates a minimally invasive approach for early-stage disease detection using nanomachines introduced into the bloodstream. To assess the feasibility of this approach, computational simulations are used to emulate the vascular environment and evaluate biomarker detection performance under different physiological conditions. Current modeling approaches often fail to capture essential vascular characteristics, including non-uniform flow structures, size-dependent particle mobility, and particle margination driven by red blood cell interactions. To address these limitations, our study incorporates these factors into the simulation framework and quantifies their individual and combined effects on biomarker detection probability. Baseline detection performance is first obtained under uniform flow assumptions, after which introducing selected vascular transport mechanisms progressively reduces detection probability for all vessel types and nanomachine sizes. Among the considered vessels, capillary-scale vessels provide the most favorable local encounter conditions across all nanomachine sizes. These findings highlight the need to include vessel-dependent transport effects when evaluating nanomachine-enabled biomarker detection in microvascular environments.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"1010-1018"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149033788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Security Analysis and Methods for Molecular Communication Networks Based on DNA Tiles","authors":"Christian Hyttrek;Stefan Fischer;Florian Lau","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2025.3627865","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2025.3627865","url":null,"abstract":"Nanotechnology is a promising branch of research in medicine and computer science with great potential. Especially nanonetworks allow for many novel applications and solutions for yet unsolved problems. However, due to the small size of nanodevices, new communication paradigms and the uncharted environments, new security risks and challenges occur. As molecular communication-based nanonetworks might only be able to exchange a few bits of information per second or even minute, established security measures are likely infeasible. In this paper, we analyze the potential security risks for molecular communication networks and especially those based on DNA tiles. We further demonstrate, why classical security measures are infeasible and novel approaches are necessary. We further demonstrate five potential attack types and fitting countermeasures whenever available. Whenever possible, we simulate the attacks and countermeasures with the NetTAS simulator. Lastly, we propose steganography as a low-bandwidth alternative method for making molecular communication-based nanonetworks more secure.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"226-239"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vivien Walter;Dadi Bi;Daniel L. Ruiz Blanco;Yansha Deng
{"title":"CNN-Based Detection of Mixed-Molecule Concentrations in Molecular Communication","authors":"Vivien Walter;Dadi Bi;Daniel L. Ruiz Blanco;Yansha Deng","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3677602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3677602","url":null,"abstract":"Molecular communication (MC) is a promising paradigm for applications where traditional electromagnetic communications are impractical. However, decoding chemical signals, especially in multi-transmitter systems, remains a key challenge due to interference and complex propagation dynamics. In this paper, we develop a one-dimensional fractal convolutional neural network (fCNN) to detect the concentrations of multiple types of molecules based on the absorbance spectra measured at a receiver. Our model is trained by both experimental and simulated datasets, with the latter enhanced by noise modeling to mimic real-world measurements. We demonstrate that a noise-augmented simulated dataset can effectively be a substitute for experimental data, achieving similar decoding accuracy. Our approach successfully detects bit sequences in both binary and quadruple concentration shift keying (BCSK and QCSK) scenarios, even when transmitters are desynchronized, highlighting the potential of machine learning for robust MC signal detection.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"434-445"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147665240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Absorption Shift Keying in Molecular Communication: Optimized Channel Coding and Error-Flip Demodulation for Enhanced Reliability","authors":"Wei Wang;Jingcan Chen;Liping Li","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3717181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3717181","url":null,"abstract":"In molecular communication, inter-symbol interference (ISI) severely degrades system performance. This paper proposes three optimization schemes for the absorption shift keying (AbSK) in molecular communication systems to enhance performance and reduce the bit error rate (BER). First, a dynamic codebook search mechanism is designed using the genetic algorithm (GA), which globally optimizes the codebook to adapt to the unique channel characteristics of AbSK. Second, a single error correction channel coding scheme is developed specifically for molecular communication systems, enabling error detection and correction through low complexity decoding algorithms. Additionally, a soft error flip demodulation strategy is proposed to dynamically predict error locations and iteratively refine decision conditions, further improving system reliability in a collaborative optimization approach. These schemes collectively optimize the AbSK system across three dimensions: codebook adaptation, channel coding, and demodulation algorithms, offering a high-efficiency, low-complexity integrated solution for the practical implementation of molecular communication technologies.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"822-832"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148747482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sofia A. D. de Figueiredo;Nuno M. B. Souto;Francisco A. B. Cercas;Jorge M. F. Morgado
{"title":"Empirical Channel Modeling for Multi-Molecule Molecular Communication: An Experimental Fluorescence-Based Approach","authors":"Sofia A. D. de Figueiredo;Nuno M. B. Souto;Francisco A. B. Cercas;Jorge M. F. Morgado","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3738747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3738747","url":null,"abstract":"Molecular communication (MC) is a new communication paradigm in which molecules are employed as information carriers. An essential requirement for the design of reliable MC systems is the characterization of the communication channel. Despite significant advances in conceptual modeling, there is an extensive gap between theoretical models and the physical behavior observed in real-world environments. An often more effective approach relies on the adoption of empirical channel models, which can more accurately capture the behavior of the channel under a specific scenario. Along this line, we present a methodology to derive an empirical channel model for a multi-molecule MC (MM-MC) system based on fluorescence in advection–diffusion channels. In this framework, two distinct types of fluorescent molecules are employed to transmit information, enabling the implementation of Molecular Shift Keying (MoSK) and molecule type Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (mtMIMO) schemes. The proposed approach analyzes the channel response in both spatial and temporal domains, with particular attention to the inter-symbol interference (ISI) resulting from molecular interactions within the channel. Furthermore, the interference caused by the simultaneous use of different molecular types is modeled and integrated into the channel characterization. In addition, we propose a novel low complexity non-coherent detection scheme for both MoSK and mtMIMO configurations, which includes a simple interference mitigation. To develop and validate the proposed model and detection scheme, an experimental testbed was implemented and used to emulate realistic MC scenarios. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of fluorescence-based MM-MC systems employing mtMIMO and MoSK techniques.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"1100-1115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149133567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Molecular Nanonetworks: A QoS Aware Adaptive MAC Protocol","authors":"Grigorios Karagiannakis;Konstantinos Kantelis;Petros Nicopolitidis;Georgios Papadimitriou","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3687126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3687126","url":null,"abstract":"Molecular nanonetworks are an emerging research area that bridges nanotechnology and biology with the principles of networking. In diffusion-based models, information-carrying molecules move according to the principles of Brownian motion, resulting in the random nature of their propagation through the medium. The presence of multiple transmitters and a single receiver represents a critical communication scenario in molecular nanonetworks, driven by application requirements. In this work, a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-based MAC protocol is proposed, achieving high performance and enabling the development of applications that offer Quality of Service (QoS). According to the proposed protocol, each transmitter, prior to releasing information-carrying molecules, sends a control message to the receiver to initiate a connection path. Upon reception, the receiver, acting as a control node, responds with a control message to acknowledge the connection request and adjust the number of information-carrying molecules to be released by the transmitters to prevent receiver saturation caused by the excessive concentration of information molecules. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol enhances message detection reliability, improves channel utilization efficiency, and ensures stable QoS performance across varying network conditions. By implementing a TDMA-based MAC protocol and a synchronization process for message exchange, we aim to address these challenges and improve overall system performance while introducing QoS characteristics essential for healthcare applications. The proposed protocol serves as a foundation for a new generation of MAC protocols designed for molecular nanonetworks, capable of adapting to varying transmission distances and transmission power levels within the Internet of Bio-NanoThings (IoBNT) framework.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"527-541"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147828839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ling Zhang;Huiyu Luo;Carolina Alventosa;Yiming Tang;Estela Climent;Antoni Llopis-Lorente;Ramón Martínez-Mañez;Lin Lin
{"title":"Design of Molecular Communication Amplifier Based on Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles","authors":"Ling Zhang;Huiyu Luo;Carolina Alventosa;Yiming Tang;Estela Climent;Antoni Llopis-Lorente;Ramón Martínez-Mañez;Lin Lin","doi":"10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3690722","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TMBMC.2026.3690722","url":null,"abstract":"Molecular communication (MC) employs molecules as information carriers. However, molecules inevitably suffer from concentration attenuation and molecular degradation due to diffusion, convection, and chemical interactions with the environment. To address this challenge, we design an MC amplifier based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs). MSNs feature highly ordered porous structures, enabling the encapsulation of a large number of molecules and regulated release in response to specific chemical inputs through functionalized molecular gates. In the MC amplifier, incoming signal molecules chemically interact with molecular gates on the MSNs, triggering the opening of mesopores and the release of the stored molecules. The molecules then propagate through the channel and serve as the input for the subsequent amplification stage, where they induce gate-opening reactions, thereby enabling cascaded, multi-stage molecular amplification. The amplification process is modeled using chemical reaction kinetics equations, and the system performance is evaluated in terms of an amplification factor, demonstrating effective compensation for molecular attenuation during propagation. This work provides a potential strategy for long-distance molecular communication.","PeriodicalId":36530,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications","volume":"12 ","pages":"628-632"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148003374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}