Communication Protocols for Molecular Communication Networks Based on DNA

Nanonetworks are among the emerging scientific fields with countless novel and beneficial applications in medicine and other areas. While the paradigm existed for a while now, it is still unclear what kind of communication medium will be used in the future. Recently, molecular communication established itself as the most feasible-seeming candidate. Molecular communication may further be implemented on the basis of DNA molecules like DNA tiles. These offer a number of advantages like in-message computation, a built-in addressing mechanism and biocompatibility. However, it is unclear if and how existing protocol stacks like TCP/IP may be used for molecular communication and DNA-based molecular communication in particular. In this paper, we analyze if and how the various macroscopic protocol aspects may be useful and how they can be implemented. We further evaluate and validate all resulting concepts in the NetTAS to suggest the feasibility of such an approach. In the end, we present a feasible DNA-based protocol stack that incorporates many of the current needs for molecular communication networks based on DNA.