Pit Hofmann

Jorge Torres Gómez, Pit Hofmann, Lisa Y. Debus et al.

Recent developments in the Internet of Bio-Nano-Things (IoBNT) are laying the foundation for innovative healthcare applications that envision a network of remotely coordinated nanodevices within the human body to monitor and actuate over potential diseases. However, interconnecting such nanodevices requires communication strategies that can cope with molecular communication (MC) channels, whose complex, stochastic, and dynamic behavior often makes accurate physical modeling infeasible. To explore the limits of nanodevice interconnectivity under these conditions, this survey focuses on data-driven communication strategies for MC systems, with particular emphasis on machine learning (ML) methods and neural network (NN) architectures for a robust and adaptive communication scheme at the nanoscale. Research on NN-enabled MC spans several aspects covered in this survey, including NNs for communication in IoBNT networks, the feasibility of biocompatible NN realization, explainable approaches, and the generation of training datasets. We also include open-source code examples to support reproducible research across key MC scenarios. Finally, we identify emerging challenges, including the need for robust NN architectures, biologically integrated NN modules, and scalable training strategies.

Ruifeng Zheng, Zhihan Xu, Veronika Volkova et al.

In this paper, we study DNA-based molecular communication with microarray-style reception under reversible hybridization, where the bound-state observation exhibits both inter-symbol interference and colored counting noise. To capture these effects in a communication-oriented form, we develop a Markov state-space framework based on a voxelized reaction--diffusion model, in which a block-structured transition matrix describes molecular transport and binding/unbinding dynamics. For the microarray specialization, this representation yields the channel impulse response, the equilibrium gain, and a settling-time-based characterization of the effective channel memory. Building on the resulting symbol-rate observation model for on--off keying, we derive a grouped-binomial counting model and obtain a closed-form expression for the covariance of the counting noise. Based on these statistics, we further develop a differential-threshold detector and a finite-memory decision-feedback equalizer. Numerical results validate the theoretical correlation behavior and show that the relative performance of the proposed receivers depends strongly on the channel-memory regime.

Juan A. Cabrera, Pit Hofmann, Jonas Schulz et al.

The Shared Prosperity Internet (SPI) is a network-computing architecture that makes the benefits of automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) broadly accessible to the society. To ground its design, this paper maps the physical constraints of Shannon, Landauer, Turing, and Einstein to three design principles: trustworthiness, sustainability, and technological sovereignty, and maps them into three technical pillars: i) post-Shannon, goal-oriented communication that transmits only what the task requires; ii) anticipatory decision-making ("negative latency") with confidence-bounded pre-action and correction; and iii) beyond-digital computing that selects energy-optimal substrates under deadline and computability constraints. The SPI is grounded in three societal use cases: remote teaching for pupils, remote teaching of robots and cyber-physical systems, and elder care. Furthermore, this paper defines measurable outcomes for an SPI, including latency decomposition, bits per event, energy and CO2 per task, safety and privacy indicators, and robustness.

Ruifeng Zheng, Pengjie Zhou, Martín Schottlender et al.

This paper develops a molecular integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework that exploits the same molecular observations for physical-parameter sensing and data detection. As a representative instantiation, we consider a microfluidic molecular communication (MC) channel and study transmitter--receiver (TX--RX) distance sensing, where the distance affects the propagation delay, transient response, and inter-symbol interference structure. A distance-parameterized Markov state--space model is established to obtain distance-dependent channel impulse responses and a block observation model for on-off keying signaling. Based on this model, we design a pilot-assisted low-complexity receiver that combines distance initialization, decision-feedback equalization (DFE), and iterative joint refinement. Numerical results show accurate distance sensing and improved bit error ratio (BER), demonstrating the mutual benefit between sensing and communication and highlighting microfluidic MC as a representative platform for molecular ISAC.

Martin Schottlender, Pengjie Zhou, Veronika Volkova et al.

Concurrent advances across fields such as organoid technology, Microelectrode Arrays (MEAs), neuromorphic computing, and machine learning have given rise to a groundbreaking research paradigm: Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI). SBI refers to engineered systems in which living Biological Neural Networks (BNNs) are interfaced with hardware and software to perform task-oriented information processing in a closed loop. This cutting-edge technology, while still in its infancy, has the potential to deliver highly efficient performance across both computing capabilities and energy consumption. The early stage of this field underscores the need for reliable multi-scale and cross-domain interaction interfaces to support applications in robotics, biomedicine, signal processing, and neuroscience research. The hitherto lack of commercially available SBI platforms has slowed the development, as the conditions to produce a testbed are expensive and cumbersome. The introduction of standardized, platform- and cloud-integrated BNNs has been a crucial catalyst for the scientific community, improving the accessibility of SBI and leading the way to further developments. In this survey, we summarize the innovations that contributed to the emergence of SBI and the first testbed interfaces that enabled its embodiment. This work reframes SBI as a bio-digital interaction system and introduces a unified protocol across encoding, decoding, system engineering, and benchmarking.