A Node Activation-Based Routing Scheme in Micro/Nanobots Networks

The rapid advancements of Micro/NanoBOTs (MNBOTs) introduce a new research opportunity in routing multiple MNBOTs to perform practical biomedical applications. In this paper, leveraging on existing group communication and motion control schemes for MNBOTs, we propose an Activation Based Molecular Routing (ABMR) scheme in MNBOT networks to coordinate the movement of MNBOTs to activate all the nodes on the routing path to the sink node in bio-sensing applications. An optimization-based algorithm, Lagrangian Algorithm (LGA), is proposed to identify cost efficient ABMR solutions. In the computation experiments, we adopt the MNBOT's parameters from a newly developed biocompatible microcapsule to consider the interplay between the MNBOT guiding force from magnetic field and the MNBOT movement deviation from Brownian motion. It shows that as compared to the conventional diffusion based MNBOT routing scheme, MNBOT routing with magnetic guidance scheme can help to reach the destinations with small receiving volume in shorter propagation time, which is important in high precision bio-medical applications. In addition, LGA outperforms the other heuristics in terms of MNBOT travelled distance under different traffic demands and activation thresholds. LGA also identifies the MNBOT routing decisions with acceptable sink node activation time by minimizing the MNBOT propagation delay as the objective function. This enables ABMR scheme to be applicable to time sensitive biosensing applications.