On Information Transmission Among Nanomachines

In this paper, the authors review the fundamental issues arising when nanoscale devices are meant to be interconnected to transmit information. The possibility of manipulating and assembling objects at the atomic scale has paved the way for a future generation of computing machines, where nanoscale devices substitute silicon-based transistors. Interconnections, needed to perform complex operations, are expected to be the driving factor in terms of performance and costs of the resulting systems. In view of the current research on nanomachines, the authors are interested in understanding which may be the limits of communications at the nanoscale level. Our research stems from a few, simple and yet unanswered questions, like "what is the capacity of a nanowire/nanotube?", "what is the capacity of molecular-based communication systems?" etc. While we do not answer to such questions directly, we shed some light on possible approaches based on information-theoretical concepts