NetADD: Network Flow-Based Distributed Topology Control on Addressing Asymmetric Data Delivery in Nanonetworks

Architecting nanonetwork-based coronary heart disease monitoring requires a set of nanodevice-embedded drug-eluting stents (nanoDESs) inserted inside the affected sites of coronary arteries of the heart to cooperatively collect medical information therein and transmit the information via the nano–macro (NM) interface, which is inserted into the intercostal space of the rib cage. These nanonetworks, which operate in the terahertz band (0.1–10 THz), face increased complexity in delivering the data of underlying nanonetworks to the NM, due to the limited energy content of nanoDESs. In this paper, we propose a distributed topology control algorithm based on the solution of the well-known network flow problem for addressing asymmetric data delivery. The generated topology is dynamic in the sense that it changes according to the energy levels of the nanoDESs. The proposed algorithm helps establish the topology and balance the load on nanoDESs. The proposed approach changes the topology if there arises a need to balance the energy content of the nanoDESs. We study the problem of asymmetric data delivery in various types of network topologies as well. The proposed solution is shown via extensive simulation to yield improved performance over the existing topology control solutions with respect to data delivery ratio, energy consumption, delay, and the events of shutdown.