Communicating mobile nano-machines and their computational power

Abstract

A computational model of molecularly communicating mobile nanomachines is defined. Nanomachines are modeled by a variant of finite-state automata - so-called timed probabilistic automata-augmented by a severely restricted communication mechanism capturing the main features of molecular communication. We show that for molecular communication among such motile machines an asynchronous stochastic protocol originally designed for wireless (radio) communication in so-called amorphous computers with static computational units can also be used. We design an algorithm that using the previous protocol, randomness and timing delays selects with a high probability a leader from among sets of anonymous candidates. This enables a probabilistic simulation of one of the simplest known model of a programmable computer - so-called counter automaton - proving that networks of mobile nanomachines possess universal computing power. © ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2009.