IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017 - 45

Net Device (source)

Net Device (destination)

1
upper layers

upper layers
7

Medium

Transmitter
Communication
Interface

Message
Carrier

Transmitter
Communication
Interface

Field

Field
3
Receiver
Communication
Interface
Specificity

6

4

Receiver
Communication
Interface

Communication Interface

Perturbation

Perturbation

Motion

Communication Interface

2

Specificity
5

Adapted from IEEE P1906.1/Draft 1.0 Recommended Practice for Nanoscale and Molecular Communication Framework
FIGURE 5. Summary of steps composing communication as modeled using the simulation software tool within the implemented simulation framework. Source: Adapted from IEEE P1906.1/Draft 1.0 Recommended Practice for Nanoscale and Molecular Communication
Framework.

member (i.e., a pointer to the ns3:Packet
object) that represents the string of bits
(i.e., a packet) stored within the message.
Additional parameters should be added for
customizing the definition of the message
carrier component for a specific model
and use-case. The P1906NetDevice class
models the network device that participates in the communication process. It
stores within the m_interface data member
the communication interface (i.e., modeled
by the P1906CommunicationInterface
class), which is composed of P1906Transmitter CommunicationInterface and
P1906ReceiverCommunicationInterface
classes handling transmission and reception procedures, respectively. A key element of the communication process is the
Medium, modeled by the P1906Medium
class, which manages delivery of messages among the devices attached to it. It
adopts the P1906Motion class for
implementing propagation and delay

models. Perturbation, Specificity, and
Field components are modeled by the
P1906Motion, P1906Perturbation,
P1906Specificity, and P1906Field classes.
Operation of nanoscale communication is illustrated in Figure 5: 1) the
NetDevice receives a message from
upper layers. The message is delivered to
the Transmitter Communication Interface, 2) the Perturbation component is
used to create the Message Carrier, 3) the
Transmitter Communication Interface
triggers the propagation in the medium
by passing the Message Carrier, Perturbation, and Field components, 4) the
Motion component modifies properties of
the Message Carrier, for example, propagation loss and delay, 5) the Message
Carrier is delivered to the receiver and the
Specificity component verifies compatibility, 6) when compatible, the message is
delivered to the upper layers, and 7) the
message is received by upper layers.

VII. EXAMPLE SIMULATIONS
OF ELECTROMAGNETIC AND
MOLECULAR COMMUNICATION
The core of the simulator has been
extended to model communication among
nanoscale devices based on the exchange
of both EM waves and molecules.
The EM example assumes transmission of the message carrier using a THz
channel by using 0.45 through 1.55 THz
spectrum divided into subchannels of
0.1 THz each, an omnidirectional antenna, and a physical layer based on TimeSpread On-Off Keying (TS-OOK)
modulation [8]. The perturbation component includes all parameters characterizing electromagnetic transmission,
such as transmission power, pulse duration, pulse interval, central frequency of
the bandwidth adopted during the transmission, bandwidth size, and the size of
each subchannel. During the generation
of messages, such parameters are also
april 2017

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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - April 2017
