Bio-inspired approach for eliminating redundant nanodevices in internet of bio-nano things

The concept of Internet of Things has opened up many possibilities such as the prospective application domain where very tiny, biocompatible, and non-intrusive devices can communicate through the internet. This concept is termed the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT). The interconnection and co-operability of bio-nanodevice networks have the potential to offer new technological innovations and solutions especially in ambient assisted living (AAL) and remote therapy. A crucial functionality of a typical IoBNT is to be able to eliminate a set of nanodevices from the network or subnetwork when the need arises. In this paper, we present a model example of an IoBNT that has the capability to initiate the elimination of bio-nanodevices from the network when desired. This model mimics the apoptotic signalling pathways in living organisms, where death molecules are sent to cells to initiate their self-annihilation from the system. To quantify the success of the elimination process, we introduced a performance parameter termed the residence factor, which related the number of eliminated devices to the non-eliminated ones. Numerical results show that for low concentration of the transmitted death molecules, the performance of the system significantly depends on the distances between a death initiating nanotransmitter and the nanodevices marked for elimination. The system performance also depends on the dimensional size of the nanodevices targeted for elimination.