IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017 - 39

with other biosignals can be more measureable than EEG alone, as it alone
presents too meager a signal to derive
any meaningful value. EEG is used in
diagnosing neuro abnormality and for
brain injury rehabilitation, but entertainment, education, and marketing applications abound. Significantly novel use has
resulted in potential disruptive technologies making use of EEG.
Games and video triggered by brain
signals are intriguing. Training in

neuroscience is recognized as the next
job skill in high demand. Interoperable
brain data in cloud computing is open
for widespread brain pattern storage
and recognition. These traits have
manifested in the three Hackathons
with more awareness than in conventional practice.
In summary, Table 4 describes the
depth and the breadth of tools and
applications that can be done with the
BCI. Although proprietary interfaces

are still the dominant implementation,
potentially standard interfaces exist
in OpenBCI, inMEx, NeuroPype, and
NeuroScale, if not more development
down the line.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Narisa N.Y. Chu (Narisa.chu@ieee
.org) is the IEEE Consumer Electronics
Society representative to the IEEE
Brain Initiative and initiator of the IEEE
Brain-Computer Interface Hackathons.

Interoperable Nanoscale Communication
By Stephen F. Bush

anoscale communication fills a
gap, namely, ad hoc communication among entities whose
length scale is on the order of
nanometers. These entities may be
entirely synthetic, but in practice they
have more often involved machine communication with small-scale biological
entities, namely, subcellular components. Communication directly with and
through neurons is a prime example.
However, prior to the IEEE 1906.12015 standard, there was no clear and
consistent definition of nanoscale communication because it encompasses a
broad set of disciplines nor were the
research results interoperable or even
directly usable by others to build upon.
The IEEE 1906.1-2015 standard has
helped to alleviate this problem by
defining a conceptual model, practical
framework, and common metrics that
allow industry and research to speak a
common language and to develop
This article originally appeared in IEEE
Transactions on Molecular, Biological,
and Multi-Scale Communications, vol.1,
no. 1, March 2015.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2016.2640600
Date of publication: 15 March 2017

interoperable simulations and hardware
components without constraining innovation or creativity. The developers of
the standard realize that this is an
emerging technology and that new ideas
and inventions that leverage change in
length scale for communication have
yet to be developed.
I was invited by Dr. Narisa Chu, a
Governor of the IEEE Consumer Electronics (CE) Society Board and a primary
contributor to IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine's "Standards" column,
to include a reprint of the article that follows. Narisa Chu and I are Society representatives in the IEEE Brain Initiative,
a newly inaugurated multidisciplinary
domain under the charter of IEEE
Future Directions. I was invited by Dr.
Chu to elaborate upon nanoscale communications in IEEE CE Magazine
"Standards" column because the technology described in IEEE P1906.1 is
fundamental to neuro-technology applications impacting consumers and communications that are happening in health
care, education, and entertainment in
disruptive forms to the realization of
Internet of Things and fifth-generation
(5G) evolutions.
The title of the reprinted article is
derived from Richard Feynman's 1959

talk "There's Plenty of Room at the
Bottom." As I've stated in other opinion
pieces, I believe that, within this vast
ocean, at the bottom there will be a
requirement for communication. Medicine and quantum physics continue to
discover new forms of communication
in nature that have yet to be efficiently
harnessed. These ideas are discussed in
more detail in S.F. Bush, Nanoscale
Communication Networks (Norwood,
MA: Artech House, MA, 2010), which
is the classic text on the topic (https://
w w w. a m a z o n . c o m / N a n o s c a l e Communication- Networks-ScienceEngineering/dp/1608070034).
The following reprint is an efficient
way to obtain a quick grasp of the IEEE
1906.1-2015 standard. However, it's always important to caution the reader that
the actual standard contains much more
detail than is covered in this reprint and
not to attempt to use this reprint in place
of the actual standard.
There are many ways to learn more
about nanoscale communication, leverage it for your company, and participate in its development. First, a "Best
Readings in Nanoscale Communication Networks" (http://www.comsoc.org/
best-readings/nanoscale-communicationnetworks) is freely available for those
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