Search

The hyperviscosity syndrome consists of an excessive viscosity of the blood. It has to be timely detected, since it significantly increases the risk of many cardiovascular diseases. It can manifest essentially in two different ways, depending on the capability of the cardiocirculatory system to compensate the increased resistance experienced by the blood in vessels. In case of compensation, the blood flow velocity remains nearly unaltered; otherwise a significant decrease can occur. In this paper, we propose a blood viscosity monitoring system based on molecular communications. It could be used in risky patients for continuous monitoring and can detect blood hyperviscosity both in case of compensation, even partial, and in case of uncompensated cardiocirculatory systems. This proposal results to be both simple and effective for real time estimating the blood viscosity level, without any need of resorting to invasive blood analyses. The main idea is to leverage the statistics of particle dispersion and absorption in a blood vessel as a function of blood viscosity. Viscosity is estimated by processing the statistics of the received signal molecules, which are easy to collect. These features open the way to the implementation of the proposed solution in a simple and cheap device.

Molecular Communications is a research area which combines the expertise of two main fields of science: biology and engineering. This multidisciplinarity, in addition to being a fruitful strength, makes knowledge exchange between researchers difficult. This issue has led to the definition of a new markup language, named Molecular Communication Markup Language (MolComML). It contributes to the harmonization of cross-disciplinary research activities. By leveraging the typical flexibility of markup languages, it specifies the essential components of generic molecular communication scenarios, by combining both numerical analysis and experimental synthesis. In this paper we illustrate the architecture of MolComML and focus on its peculiarities that allow describing molecular communications systems. In addition, we evaluate the performance of some molecular communication systems by using different simulation packages, configured by using the MolComML, in order to demonstrate both its portability and the possibility of combining different platforms for creating complex simulation tools.

In emergency scenarios, tracking first responders is essential. While in open areas the quality of the Global Positioning System (GPS) service is typically acceptable, in partially obstructed environments, such as urban canyons, or indoor, it could be either unavailable or hindered by very coarse and unacceptable estimates. Moreover, most of the proposals for overcoming these limitations could be unsuitable in emergency scenarios. We propose a localization and tracking system based on the combined usage of WiFi and GPS. Essentially, when the GPS coverage is scarce, our localization solution allows augmenting it by using the WiFi access points as virtual satellites. When GPS coverage is not available at all, we use WiFi trilateration based on received signal strength, even maintaining the same coordinate system used in the GPS. The tracking protocol makes use of session initiation protocol messaging over a WiFi network. The proposed system is characterized by ease of deployment and usage, since it does not require any particular configuration. In order to assess its feasibility, we implemented a proof-of-concept prototype made up of low-cost commercial off-the-shelf components and open-source software. The performance tests carried out by using this prototype confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Molecular communications (MolCom) has been established as one of the novel interdisciplinary research themes with strong impact on science and technology in the last five years. For this reason, in 2016 the European Project CIRCLE (Coordinating European Research on Molecular Communications) started organizing an annual event, named Workshop on Molecular Communications , to encourage strategic development of molecular communications research in Europe with a focus on broadening the reach of the community into adjacent disciplines, such as synthetic biology, systems biology, pharmacology, inter/intra cellular communications, chemical networks, and communications engineering. The third edition of the Workshop on Molecular Communications was organized by the IDLab—Department of Information Technology of the Ghent University—IMEC on April 4–6, 2018. The workshop has provided the research community with an opportunity to meet and share their research, vision and experience in the area of molecular communications across different disciplines. In addition to invited talks and tutorials, the technical program committee accepted 19 extended abstracts for oral presentation. Among them, a total of four papers were selected for publication in this special section of IEEE Transactions on NanoBioscience after a subsequent IEEE independent peer review process. Moreover, three additional papers were selected to be included in the special issue among those submitted to it through the open call, totaling seven accepted papers for this special issue. The Guest editors sincerely thank all the participants for their appreciated contributions.

This paper considers the scenario of a targeted drug delivery system, which consists of deploying a number of biological nanomachines close to a biological target (e.g., a tumor), able to deliver drug molecules in the diseased area. Suitably located transmitters are designed to release a continuous flow of drug molecules in the surrounding environment, where they diffuse and reach the target. These molecules are received when they chemically react with compliant receptors deployed on the receiver surface. In these conditions, if the release rate is relatively high and the drug absorption time is significant, congestion may happen, essentially at the receiver site. This phenomenon limits the drug absorption rate and makes the signal transmission ineffective, with an undesired diffusion of drug molecules elsewhere in the body. The original contribution of this paper consists of a theoretical analysis of the causes of congestion in diffusion-based molecular communications. For this purpose, it is proposed a reception model consisting of a set of pure loss queuing systems. The proposed model exhibits an excellent agreement with the results of a simulation campaign made by using the Biological and Nano-Scale communication simulator version 2 (BiNS2), a well-known simulator for molecular communications, whose reliability has been assessed through in vitro experiments. The obtained results can be used in rate control algorithms to optimally determine the optimal release rate of molecules in drug delivery applications.

This paper provides a global picture about the deployment of networked processing services for genomic data sets. Many current research make an extensive use genomic data, which are massive and rapidly increasing over time. They are typically stored in remote databases, accessible by using Internet. For this reason, a significant issue for effectively handling genomic data through data networks consists of the available network services. A first contribution of this paper consists of identifying the still unexploited features of genomic data that could allow optimizing their networked management. The second and main contribution of this survey consists of a methodological classification of computing and networking alternatives which can be used to offer what we call the Genomic-as-a-Service (GaaS) paradigm. In more detail, we analyze the main genomic processing applications, and classify not only the main computing alternatives to run genomics workflows in either a local machine or a distributed cloud environment, but also the main software technologies available to develop genomic processing services. Since an analysis encompassing only the computing aspects would provide only a partial view of the issues for deploying GaaS system, we present also the main networking technologies that are available to efficiently support a GaaS solution. We first focus on existing service platforms, and analyze them in terms of service features, such as scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. Then, we present a taxonomy for both wide area and datacenter network technologies that may fit the GaaS requirements. It emerges that virtualization, both in computing and networking, is the key for a successful large-scale exploitation of genomic data, by pushing ahead the adoption of the GaaS paradigm. Finally, the paper illustrates a short and long-term vision on future research challenges in the field., Comment: Journal publication

This article shows the usage and the experimental analysis of open source software packages for designing and implementing carrier-grade multimedia services. The shown implementation is based on the use of Java Call Control APIs for managing SIP sessions and MGCP connections. This JCC implementation has been integrated within an open source platform, Mobicents JSLEE. Mobicents is a runtime environment suitable for deploying services integrating voice, video, and messaging over different networks. An extensive experimental campaign has allowed suitable deployment strategies to be identified, depending on the service features. The main contribution of this article is to present these strategies, consisting of resource allocation and configuration in a virtualized environment. The results of our experiments are aimed at providing general guidance on configuring servers in a virtualized environment such as a cloud. They can also be helpful to address the server placement problem, which is beyond the scope of this article. An additional contribution of this article consists of a simple and effective model to predict the achievable server throughput, expressed in calls per second. For this purpose, we have measured the CPU time for processing SIP and MGCP messages, and estimated the maximum sustainable load of each virtual machine. In this way, we can preliminarily estimate the number of virtualized instances of the platform needed for handling a given workload with the desired quality of service.

Nanoscale communications is an emergent research topic with potential applications in many fields. In order to design nanomachines able to exploit the communication potentials of nanoscale environments, it is necessary to identify the basic communication mechanisms and the relevant parameters. In this paper, we show how system parameters can be derived by suitably matching the results of in vitro experiments with those obtained via simulations by using the BiNS2 simulator. In order to scale the simulation from micrometric settings, with timescale in the order of seconds, to real experiments lasting tens of minutes with millimetric size, we enhanced the BiNS2 simulator by introducing a space partition algorithm based on the octree. In this way, the simulator can exploit the high level of parallelism of modern multicore computer architectures. We have used this technique for simulating an experiment focused on the communication between platelets and endothelium through the diffusion of nanoparticles. Simulation results match experimental data, thus allowing us to infer useful information on the receiver operation.

A number of techniques have been recently proposed to implement molecular communication, a novel method which aims to implement communication networks at the nanoscale, known as nanonetworks. A common characteristic of these techniques is that their main resource consists of molecules, which are inherently discrete. This paper presents DIRECT, a novel networking model which differs from conventional models by the way of treating resources as discrete entities; therefore, it is particularly aimed to the analysis of molecular communication techniques. Resources can be involved in different tasks in a network, such as message encoding, they do not attenuate in physical terms and they are considered 100% reusable. The essential properties of DIRECT are explored and the key parameters are investigated throughout this paper.

In this article, the use of IEEE 802.11 technology is used for the problem of augmenting the coverage of satellite positioning systems when less than four satellites are visible, by using a low complexity and effective technique involving a terrestrial radio technology. The solution consists of processing the information received by the terrestrial infrastructure for introducing virtual satellites to obtain the minimum number of satellites needed for fixing the receiver position. The feasibility and the achievable performance is demonstrated experimentally by implementing real prototypes using either sophisticated or low-cost receivers in different experiments. The results obtained are comparable, in terms of error magnitude, with those of a plain GPS receiver when four satellites are visible.

A functional mapping between the Java Call Control (JCC) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can help developers more easily create, deploy, and manage advanced telecom services.

Nanonetworking is a new interdisciplinary research area including nanotechnology, biotechnology, and ICT. In this paper, we present a novel simulation platform designed for modeling information exchange at nanoscales. This platform is adaptable to any kind of nano bearer, i.e. any mechanism used to transport information, such as electromagnetic waves or calcium ions. Moreover, it includes a set of configuration functions in order to adapt to different types of biological environments. In this paper, we provide a throughout description of the simulation libraries. In addition, we demonstrate their capabilities by modeling a section of a lymph node and the information transfer within it, which happens between antibody molecules produced by the immune system during the humoral immune response.

A critical issue for the convergence of telephone networks towards an all IP environment is the provisioning of an adequate QoS level to the telephone traffic. Following the guidelines detailed in RFC 2990, we recently proposed an admission control function, named Gauge & Gate Reservation with Independent Probing (GRIP), through which we are able to provide QoS guarantees by means of stateless procedures compliant within the Differentiated Service (DiffServ) paradigm, which is the de facto standard for QoS provisioning in Internet. The main goal of this paper is to present a specific implementation of GRIP optimized for supporting voice over IP (VoIP) services within a DiffServ cloud. In particular, we propose and analyze a simple measurement-based call admission control procedure for carrying VoIP traffic in a DiffServ environment. We assume voice sources are leaky bucket controlled with known leaky bucket parameters. We analyze the leaky bucket to derive the distribution of the times over which voice sources generate traffic at peak and regulated rates. We use the results of that analysis, which provides complete knowledge of the traffic generation characteristics of a single source, to derive a Markov chain model that characterizes the voice packet generation process of a single voice source. We then derive a simple stateless threshold policy for admission control; that is, our policy is of the form if, at admission request time,x=

Digital Cinema (DC) consists of integration of new advanced digital technologies in the context of the cinema system. As regards the transport of DC content towards theatres, Distributors may select the method that is both economically and technically sound. In this work, which is carried out within the framework of the IST Integrated Project Enhanced Digital CINEma (EDCINE), we deal with the network distribution service provided by a Network Service Provider, which becomes a new actor in the DC business. One of the main criticalities of the system is the very large size of the contents to be transferred towards theatres. From the operator's perspective, this criticality translates into the objective of optimising the usage of network resources while complying with quality of service (QoS) constraints. The goal of this paper is to present the system which is able to support the network delivery of DC contents, with a special focus on live event delivery. This service can consume a large amount of network bandwidth, not only because of the volume of transmitted data, but also due to the number of receivers, and thus multicast transmission proves to be very useful. Consequently, a key issue of the overall distribution system is the request-routing algorithm, the goal of which is to optimise the QoS-guaranteed delivery of a number of live streams in the backbone, each one of which is sent towards a set of theatres (QoS multicast routing). We consider the MultiProtocol Label Switching mechanism, which has emerged as an elegant solution to meet traffic engineering and resource reservation requirements in backbone networks, and focus especially on the overall request-routing procedure, the mathematical modelling of the problem, and relevant solving algorithms. Finally, we present the comparative performance evaluation of these algorithms by means of an extensive simulation campaign performed with the OMNeT++ simulation platform.

If the Internet is to become a network supporting differentiated application and transfer services, advanced architectures must be deployed to efficiently support hard Quality of Service (QoS) and usage-based charging. In this paper we present a novel pricing scheme for IP services with guaranteed quality. Our approach is built on the basis of the virtual delay, which is a novel, simple and effective QoS index that describes an advanced IP service. We propose a model to compute the virtual delay from a purely technical point of view, taking into account not only guaranteed performance, but also traffic and system parameters. We then analyze the sensitivity of both the virtual delay and the tariff towards the involved parameters, taking into account both the users' benefit and the operators' income. We also extend the pricing model to make it dependent on service demand. Finally, we also present an economic analysis, the aim of which is to establish a model to set the QoS level and the relevant price, taking into account revenue, social fairness, and service availability.

The evolution and the spreading of wireless access technology and the consequent increase of user mobility will make handover procedures critical for the provision of Quality of Service in the next generation wireless Internet. Often, layer 3 handovers are supposed to be driven by access layer procedures. In this way, the movement detection delay can be reduced, but at the expenses of making the Mobile IP protocol dependent of lower layer implementations. Furthermore, this approach may not be effective when users roam among heterogeneous networks. Nevertheless, movement detection algorithms, which operate at the Mobile IP layer, imply appreciable delays, usually intolerable for real time services.In this paper, we propose a Mobile IP handover scheme based on a novel movement detection algorithm at layer 3, able to timely manage migrations by exploiting advertisements losses, combined with a two-timers mechanism.We analyze the performance of our algorithm in terms of handover delay and throughput, and we show that our solution is able to decrease the movement detection delay as much as 47% with respect to other literature solutions that pursue similar approaches. In addition, this feature implies also higher values of the throughput seen by the TCP layer.

This letter proposes a new architectural solution for service creation in JSLEE-compliant platforms, where service business logic can be separated by implementation issues and designed by non JSLEE experts. The novelty consists of integrating a workflow engine inside the development environment of the JSLEE platform, thus allowing simplified management in the development of advanced services and reduction of the time to market of new services.

The goal of this letter is to present a model to compute a quality-of-service (QoS) index to characterize IP services. Then, we show how such a score may be used in a clear and flexible way for defining advanced usage-based tariff criteria to charge QoS guaranteed network services to address the dynamics of the expected future telecommunications scenario.

Fifth generation (5G) and beyond systems require flexible and efficient monitoring platforms to guarantee optimal key performance indicators (KPIs) in various scenarios. Their applicability in Edge computing environments requires lightweight monitoring solutions. This work evaluates different candidate technologies to implement a monitoring platform for 5G and beyond systems in these environments. For monitoring data plane technologies, we evaluate different virtualization technologies, including bare metal servers, virtual machines, and orchestrated containers. We show that containers not only offer superior flexibility and deployment agility, but also allow obtaining better throughput and latency. In addition, we explore the suitability of the Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) serverless paradigm for deploying the functions used to manage the monitoring platform. This is motivated by the event oriented nature of those functions, designed to set up the monitoring infrastructure for newly created services. When the FaaS warm start mode is used, the platform gives users the perception of resources that are always available. When a cold start mode is used, containers running the application"s modules are automatically destroyed when the application is not in use. Our analysis compares both of them with the standard deployment of microservices. The experimental results show that the cold start mode produces a significant latency increase, along with potential instabilities. For this reason, its usage is not recommended despite the potential savings of computing resources. Conversely, when the warm start mode is used for executing configuration tasks of monitoring infrastructure, it can provide similar execution times to a microservice-based deployment. In addition, the FaaS approach significantly simplifies the code logic in comparison with microservices, reducing lines of code to less than 38%, thus reducing development time. Thus, FaaS in warm start mode represents the best candidate technology to implements such management functions. This work has been supported by EC H2020 5GPPP projects 5G-EVE and 5GROWTH under grant agreements No. 815974 and 856709, respectively.

In recent years, progresses in nanotechnology have established the foundations for implementing nanomachines capable of carrying out simple but significant tasks. Under this stimulus, researchers have been proposing various solutions for realizing nanoscale communications, considering both electromagnetic and biological communications. Their aim is to extend the capabilities of nanodevices, so as to enable the execution of more complex tasks by means of mutual coordination, achievable through communications. However, although most of these proposals show how devices can communicate at the nanoscales, they leave in the background specific applications of these new technologies. Thus, this paper shows an overview of the actual and potential applications that can rely on a specific class of such communications techniques, commonly referred to as molecular communications. In particular, we focus on health-related applications. This decision is due to the rapidly increasing interests of research communities and companies to minimally invasive, biocompatible, and targeted health-care solutions. Molecular communication techniques have actually the potentials of becoming the main technology for implementing advanced medical solution. Hence, in this paper we provide a taxonomy of potential applications, illustrate them in some detail, along with the existing open challenges for them to be actually deployed, and draw future perspectives.