A Nonparametric Stochastic Optimizer for TDMA-Based Neuronal Signaling

This paper considers neurons as a physical communication medium for intrabody networks of nano/micro-scale machines and formulates a noisy multiobjective optimization problem for a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication protocol atop the physical layer. The problem is to find the Pareto-optimal TDMA configurations that maximize communication performance (e.g., latency) by multiplexing a given neuronal network to parallelize signal transmissions while maximizing communication robustness (i.e., unlikeliness of signal interference) against noise in neuronal signaling. Using a nonparametric significance test, the proposed stochastic optimizer is designed to statistically determine the superior-inferior relationship between given two solution candidates and seek the optimal trade-offs among communication performance and robustness objectives. Simulation results show that the proposed optimizer efficiently obtains quality TDMA configurations in noisy environments and outperforms existing noise-aware stochastic optimizers.