Journey

Intra-body nano-network – Part 3 of 5 – Micro/Nanointerface, Micro/Nano routers/sensors, TS-OOK signals, Gateway.

Rumble

• Micro/Nanosensors.

Sensors at both scales are described in the scientific literature as simple devices for monitoring physiological parameters – collecting electrical signals, and metric and quantitative evaluations in the human body – but also as an interface for interaction with target organs.

For example, Micro/Nanosensors can be made up of a lattice of graphene nanosheets and carbon nanotubes or carbon fibres.

These lattices adhere to:

• the walls of the endothelium,
• the cardiac and arterial system,
• and even in brain tissue due to their ability to overcome the blood-brain barrier. ^{(( Mendonça MC, Soares ES, de Jesus MB, Ceragioli HJ, Ferreira MS, Catharino RR, da Cruz-Höfling MA. Reduced graphene oxide induces transient blood-brain barrier opening: an in vivo study. J Nanobiotechnology. 2015 Oct 30;13:78. doi: 10.1186/s12951-015-0143-z. PMID: 26518450; PMCID: PMC4628296. ResearchGate | https://jnanobiotechnology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12951-015-0143-z )) (( Graphene oxide is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and directly affect the brain Corona2Inspect Archive.org ))}

Once established, they generate electrical conduction paths, equivalent to the wires of a circuit, which, together with the superconducting capacity of the material, becomes a field effect transistor. ^{(( Yuan C, Tony A, Yin R, Wang K, Zhang W. Tactile and Thermal Sensors Built from Carbon-Polymer Nanocomposites-A Critical Review. Sensors (Basel). 2021 Feb 9;21(4):1234. doi: 10.3390/s21041234. PMID: 33572485; PMCID: PMC7916377. ))}

This makes it possible to detect the electrical pulses of the organ with which it is in contact, for example, the heart, the brain, or the alveolar tissue in the lungs, but also to interact by emitting electrical discharges, since they can also act as supercapacitors (due to the piezoelectric properties they possess).

In this sense, they would act as an interface since, given a certain signal at the appropriate frequency, they could trigger these discharge operations.

This, applied to sensitive organs such as the heart and even the respiratory system, could cause choking sensations, feinting, arrhythmias or heart attacks. ^{(( Download PDF https://docdro.id/tvx0R9b ))}

^{(( Bibliografía https://www.comusav.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bibliografiaA-MikAndersen.pdf )) (( Their Bibliography is in Spanish but I have translated and referenced Mik Anderson’s work all throughout this blog with images and links to further validate. Easiest method is to browse tag “Mik Anderson” https://pennybutler.com/tag/mik-anderson/ )) (( I’ve also listed 167 references on this post: Teslaphoresis | Self-Assembly Of Nanotubes Using An Electric Field https://pennybutler.com/teslaphoresis/ ))}

In the case of brain tissue, the scientific literature is very profuse and includes a multitude of experiments and tests with carbon nanotubes and graphene and graphene oxide nanosheets to act as electrodes, capable of acting as bridges between neurons and stimulating their electrical activity. ^{(( Gabay, Tamir, Eyal Jakobs, Eshel Ben-Jacob, and Yael Hanein. “Engineered self-organization of neural networks using carbon nanotube clusters.” Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 350, no. 2-4 (2005): 611-621. Google Scholar | Academia.edu PDF (Free Signup required) | Bypass Time-consuming Obstacles – Download PDF ))}

Which makes it possible, de facto, to create artificial axons and influence the segregation of neurotransmitters.

• Graphene and CNT nanosheets as neural interface ^{(( Yin P, Liu Y, Xiao L, Zhang C. Advanced Metallic and Polymeric Coatings for Neural Interfacing: Structures, Properties and Tissue Responses. Polymers (Basel). 2021 Aug 23;13(16):2834. doi: 10.3390/polym13162834. PMID: 34451372; PMCID: PMC8401399. | PDF: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/13/16/2834/pdf ))}
• CNT as cardiac interface, regulator of its performance ^{(( Martinelli V, Cellot G, Fabbro A, Bosi S, Mestroni L, Ballerini L. Improving cardiac myocytes performance by carbon nanotubes platforms. Front Physiol. 2013 Sep 3;4:239. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2013.00239. PMID: 24027533; PMCID: PMC3759786. ))}
• CNT as electrodes for neurostimulation ^{(( Bareket-Keren L, Hanein Y. Carbon nanotube-based multi electrode arrays for neuronal interfacing: progress and prospects. Front Neural Circuits. 2013 Jan 9;6:122. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2012.00122. PMID: 23316141; PMCID: PMC3540767. ))}
• Behaviour of graphene and CNT in neuronal tissue ^{(( Rauti, Rossana, Mattia Musto, Susanna Bosi, Maurizio Prato and Laura Ballerini. “Properties and behavior of carbon nanomaterials when interfacing neuronal cells: How far have we come?” Carbon (2019) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2018.11.026 | ScienceDirect | ResearchGate | Download PDF ))}

Presumably, this would make it possible to:

• interfere with the proper functioning of a person’s psyche,
• monitor the electrical conductivity of brain regions,
• alter behaviour, thinking, conduct, and so on.

• Micro/Nano router.

These are devices whose function is to collect and process the data obtained through the nano nodes and nano sensors, sending and propagating the information to the micro or nano interface so that the data is transmitted from the inside to the outside of the body. ^{(( A. O. Balghusoon and S. Mahfoudh, “Routing Protocols for Wireless Nanosensor Networks and Internet of Nano Things: A Comprehensive Survey,” in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 200724-200748, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3035646. | IEEE | ResearchGate ))}

It can also act in the opposite direction, that is, from outside to inside the body, for which it will receive the signal from the micro/nano interface, decoding and routing it to retransmit it to the rest of the elements of the intracorporal network.

In many references consulted, these routers consist of micro antennas or plasmonic nanoantennae, transmission circuits, encoding and decoding of signals according to a MAC protocol which determines the rules of construction of messages and antenna emissions. ^{(( Hosseininejad, Seyed Ehsan, S. Abadal, Mohammad Neshat, Reza Faraji-Dana, Max Christian Lemme, Christoph Suessmeier, Peter Haring Bolívar, Eduard Alarcón and Albert Cabellos-Aparicio. “MAC-oriented programmable terahertz PHY via graphene-based Yagi-Uda antennas.” 2018 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) (2018): 1-6. IEEE | ResearchGate )) (( Lemic, Filip, S. Abadal, Wouter Tavernier, Pieter Stroobant, Didier Colle, Eduard Alarcón, Johann M. Márquez-Barja and Jeroen Famaey. “Survey on Terahertz Nanocommunication and Networking: A Top-Down Perspective.” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 39 (2019): 1506-1543. IEEE | ResearchGate | Download PDF ))}

In addition, these micro routers are responsible for translating the lower-level signals produced by the microsensors and micro node signals known as TS-OOK.

• TS-OOK signals and MAC protocols for nano networks ^{(( R. Alsheikh, N. Akkari and E. Fadel, “MAC protocols for Wireless Nano-sensor Networks: Performance analysis and design guidelines,” 2016 Sixth International Conference on Digital Information Processing and Communications (ICDIPC), Beirut, Lebanon, 2016, pp. 129-134, doi: 10.1109/ICDIPC.2016.7470805. IEEE | ResearchGate ))}
• TS-OOK/THz band in-body nanocommunications ^{(( A. K. Vavouris, F. D. Dervisi, V. K. Papanikolaou and G. K. Karagiannidis, “An energy efficient modulation scheme for body-centric nano-communications in the THz band,” 2018 7th International Conference on Modern Circuits and Systems Technologies (MOCAST), Thessaloniki, Greece, 2018, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/MOCAST.2018.8376563. IEEE | MDPI | ResearchGate ))}
• In-vivo nanocommunications / TS-OOK scheme ^{(( R. Zhang, K. Yang, Q. H. Abbasi, K. A. Qaraqe and A. Alomainy, “Analytical Characterisation of the Terahertz In-Vivo Nano-Network in the Presence of Interference Based on TS-OOK Communication Scheme,” in IEEE Access, vol. 5, pp. 10172-10181, 2017, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2713459. IEEE ))}
• Propagation in human tissues / THz / TS-OOK ^{(( Piro, G, Bia, P, Boggia, G, Caratelli, D, Grieco, LA & Mescia, L 2016, ‘Terahertz electromagnetic field propagation in human tissues: a study on communication capabilities‘, Nano Communication Networks, vol. 10, pp. 51-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nancom.2016.07.010 | ScienceDirect | Download PDF ))}

TS-OOK signals are the most recognised in all scientific papers on intracorporal networks because they have a low energy emission cost. ^{(( Medlej, A., Dedu, E., Dhoutaut, D., Beydoun, K. (2022). Efficient Retransmission Algorithm for Ensuring Packet Delivery to Sleeping Destination Node. In: Barolli, L., Hussain, F., Enokido, T. (eds) Advanced Information Networking and Applications. AINA 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 450. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99587-4_19 | ResearchGate (all the other links were behind an EXPENSIVE academic paywall) )) (( See also: Conference Slide show on the Paper “Efficient Retransmission Algorithm for Ensuring Packet Delivery to Sleeping Destination Node” AINA 2022 | University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia | April 13 – 15, 2022 http://eugen.dedu.free.fr/publi/aina22slides.pdf )) (( Aliouat, Lina, Mohammed Rahmani, Hakim Mabed, and Julien Bourgeois. “Enhancement and performance analysis of channel access mechanisms in terahertz band.” Nano Communication Networks 29 (2021): 100364. GoogleScholar | ScienceDirect | ResearchGate )) (( Hossain, Zahed, Sreya Harshad Vedant, Carley R. Nicoletti and John F. Federici. “Multi-user Interference Modeling and Experimental Characterization for Pulse-based Terahertz Communication.” Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication (2016): https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2967446.2967462 | ResearchGate (pp, 1-6) ))}

Also, because of their simplicity due to the fact that they are binary signals, which collect electrical pulses with value “one” and silences with value “zero.”

In this way, the potential variations and pulses sensed by the micro/nano sensors and micro nodes throughout the body can be transmitted in TS-OOK, so that they can be received by the micro/nano router.

• MAC protocol / Nano-networks / Nanorouter / In-body ^{(( Sivapriya, S., and D. Sridharan. “Energy Efficient MAC Protocol for Body Centric Nano-Networks (BANNET).” ADVANCED COMPUTING (ICoAC 2017) (2017): 422. Conference Paper: ResearchGate > Download PDF (Starts Page 61) ))}
• MAC protocol / Nano-networks / Energy efficiency ^{(( Rikhtegar, Negar, Manijeh Keshtgari and Zahra Ronaghi. “EEWNSN: Energy Efficient Wireless Nano Sensor Network MAC Protocol for Communications in the Terahertz Band.” Wireless Personal Communications 97 (2017): 521-537. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-017-4517-4 (Springer/Paywall) | ResearchGate – can’t find a non-paywall version of this paper. ))}
• Cooperative nanocommunication / Nanorouter / In-body ^{(( Abbasi, Qammer H., Ali Arshad Nasir, Ke Yang, Khalid A. Qaraqe, and Akram Alomainy. “Cooperative in-vivo nano-network communication at terahertz frequencies.” IEEE Access 5 (2017): 8642-8647. GoogleScholar | IEEE | ResearchGate | Download PDF ))}
• MAC Protocol ^{(( Ghafoor, Saim, Noureddine Boujnah, Mubashir Husain Rehmani, and Alan Davy. “MAC protocols for terahertz communication: A comprehensive survey.” IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 22, no. 4 (2020): 2236-2282. GoogleScholar | IEEE | ResearchGate – Download PDF ))}

According to the scientific literature, the micro/nano router could be the key to the phenomenon of MAC broadcasts, since the data sent from inside to outside the human body is transmitted according to a medium access protocol which determines headers, data packet structures, coding, frequency hopping map, encryption, and so on. ^{(( I. A. Bouchedjera, L. Louail, Z. Aliouat and S. Harous, “DCCORONA: Distributed Cluster-based Coordinate and Routing System for Nanonetworks,” 2020 11th IEEE Annual Ubiquitous Computing, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conference (UEMCON), New York, NY, USA, 2020, pp. 0939-0945, doi: 10.1109/UEMCON51285.2020.9298084. – Conference Paper – IEEE | ResearchGate )) (( Lemic, Filip, S. Abadal, Wouter Tavernier, Pieter Stroobant, Didier Colle, Eduard Alarcón, Johann M. Márquez-Barja and Jeroen Famaey. “Survey on Terahertz Nanocommunication and Networking: A Top-Down Perspective.” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications 39 (2019): 1506-1543. IEEE | ResearchGate | Download PDF ))}

Being able to detect MAC addresses means that the designers of the intracorporal network most likely designed it to use Bluetooth low energy protocols, also known as BLE – Bluetooth Low Energy. ^{(( Le, Trong Nhan, Alain Pegatoquet and Michele Magno. “Asynchronous on demand MAC protocol using wake-up radio in wireless body area network.” 2015 6th International Workshop on Advances in Sensors and Interfaces (IWASI) (2015): 228-233. IEEE | ResearchGate ))}

However, being able to see and detect these MACs on the cell phone does not mean that they use exactly the same protocols.

In fact, it is not possible to link or connect to the anonymous MAC devices.

• Data transmission / In-Vivo / Intrabody communication / Bluetooth low energy BLE ^{(( Mezher MA, Din S, Ilyas M, Bayat O, Abbasi QH, Ashraf I. Data Transmission Enhancement Using Optimal Coding Technique Over In Vivo Channel for Interbody Communication. Big Data. 2022 Apr 4. doi: 10.1089/big.2021.0224. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35377193. Download PDF ))}
• MAC / Nanocommuications / WBAN ^{(( P. Kulakowski, K. Turbic and L. M. Correia, “From Nano-Communications to Body Area Networks: A Perspective on Truly Personal Communications,” in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 159839-159853, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3015825. IEEE | ResearchGate | Download PDF ))}

• Micro/Nanointerface.

It is defined in the scientific literature as a hybrid device responsible for capturing the signals emitted from the outside and transmitting them inward or performing the reverse process outward to emit data.

Its function is to pass through the skin barrier, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of the emissions. Therefore, it could be considered a repeater and signal amplifier.

• Nanocommunications / Thz band / Go through skin ^{(( Q. H. Abbasi, H. El Sallabi, N. Chopra, K. Yang, K. A. Qaraqe and A. Alomainy, “Terahertz Channel Characterization Inside the Human Skin for Nano-Scale Body-Centric Networks,” in IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 427-434, May 2016, doi: 10.1109/TTHZ.2016.2542213. IEEE | ResearchGate ))}
• Nanocommunications / 5G / Damage when passing through the skin / 26GHz ^{(( Betzalel N, Ben Ishai P, Feldman Y. The human skin as a sub-THz receiver – Does 5G pose a danger to it or not? Environ Res. 2018 May;163:208-216. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2018.01.032. Epub 2018 Feb 22. PMID: 29459303. ScienceDirect ))}

This device maintains communication with the micro/nano router, reproducing the transmission of data packets, according to the MAC protocol. The range of the micro/nano interface emissions is limited according to the literature consulted. Specifically, a few metres due to the mitigation of the signal caused by the layers of the skin.

However, a long transmission distance is not necessary either, considering that the recipient of the signals is the user’s cell phone, also known as the “gateway,” which will be responsible for transmitting the data packets to one or more recipients via the Internet.

• Gateway.

As indicated above, the objective of the emissions from the micro/nano router and the micro/nano interface is to reach the gateway, recognised in various publications as the cell phone, tablet, or wearable device with an internet connection.