Modelling Calcium Signaling with a Two-Layer Cluster-Based Communication Network System

Nanonetwork, which enables communication and information sharing in nano scale, provides promising solutions to address environmental, agricultural and medical challenges. Among all the bio-hybrid nanonetwork such as DNA transportation of flagellated bacteria and Brownian motion, calcium signaling is not only a ubiquitous phenomenon in various tissues, but also consumes less energy. It is defined as the information transmission carried by intercellular calcium waves with different amplitude and frequency. We design a two-layer protocol stack which incorporates nano-controller to realize and enhance the network model for cluster-based calcium signaling. The proposed physical layer specifies coding schemes and communication entities. A three-step communication protocol along with routing mechanisms are explained in the network layer. Furthermore, a ring topology is introduced for more practical implementation of the protocol stack. The proposed network model is aimed at providing insights and facilitating bio researchers in carrying out further experiments on calcium signalling. The comparison of our proposed model against biological experiments shows that the integration of nanotechnology and human intervention is capable of directing the calcium waves and achieving considerable superiority in terms of communication distance and successful transmission rate.