News and Announcements

• TKN/CCS at NetSys 2025

  September 04, 2025
  
  The TKN team together with CCS alumni met at NetSys 2025. We had a very successful conference, presenting recent reseaerch results, receiving as many as four awards, and meeting lots of friends and collaborators.
  

• Awards and Presentations at NetSys 2025

  September 03, 2025
  
  The TKN team received multiple awards for best bachelor and master theses from the German GI/ITG SIG on Communication and Distributed Systems. In addition, team members gave highlight talks on hot topics in networking and communications at NetSys 2025. Rebecca C. Pampu received a best thesis award for her Bachelor thesis Identification of the Signal Source among Multiple Simultaneous Senders in an Air-based Molecular Communication Channel. Isabel von Stebut received a best thesis award for her Bachelor thesis Resilience through Cross-Technology-Communication. Lisa Y. Debus received a best thesis award for her Master thesis Decoding Media Modulation Sharply: A Reinforcement Learning-based Receiver. Youming Tao presented a highlights talk of our recent paper Communication Efficient and Provable Federated Unlearning. Anatolij Zubow presented a highlights talk of our recent paper Hybrid-Fidelity: Utilizing IEEE 802.11 MIMO for Practical Aggregation of LiFi and WiFi.
  

• Best Paper Award at ReNeSys 2025

  September 01, 2025
  
  Our team member Sascha Rösler received a Best Paper Award for our paper Robust LoRa via Repetition in Frequency through Signal Emulation using WiFi at teh 1st Workshop on Resilient Networks and Systems (ReNeSys 2025).
  

• ReNeSys 2025 at NetSys

  September 01, 2025
  
  Dr. Doganalp Ergenc organized the 1st Workshop on Resilient Networks and Systems (ReNeSys), held in conjunction with NetSys 2025 in Ilmenau. The workshop featured several engaging presentations from the authors of accepted papers, complemented by two keynote talks that offered inspiring insights into the security and resilience of next-generation networks. You can visit the workshop website for more details!
  

• Tutorial Lecture at NetSys 2025

  September 01, 2025
  
  Our group member Jorge Torres Gomez and Pit Hofman from TU Dresden, gave a tutorial lecture on neural networks (NN) and the Internet of Bio-Nano-Things (IoBNT). The tutorial took place at the International Conference on Networked Systems (NetSys) in TU Ilmenau, Sept. 1-4, Germany. The tutorial highlighted the essentials of NN-driven communication and computing approaches, with a primary focus on the bio-inspired MC paradigm. We dedicated sessions to integrating NN into practical testbeds and generating real-world datasets.
  

• New IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials article

  August 30, 2025
  
  Our article Exhaled Breath Analysis Through the Lens of Molecular Communication: A Survey" has been accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials. Molecular Communication (MC) has long been envisioned to enable an Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) with medical applications, where nanomachines within the human body conduct monitoring, diagnosis, and therapy at micro- and nanoscale levels. MC involves information transfer via molecules and is supported by well-established theoretical models. However, practically achieving reliable, energy-efficient, and bio-compatible communication at these scales still remains a challenge. Air-Based Molecular Communication (ABMC) is a type of MC that operates over larger, meter-scale distances and extends even outside the human body. Therefore, devices and techniques to realize ABMC are readily accessible, and associated use cases can be very promising in the near future. Exhaled breath analysis has previously been proposed. It provides a non-invasive approach for health monitoring, leveraging existing commercial sensor technologies and reducing deployment barriers. The breath contains a diverse range of molecules and particles that serve as biomarkers linked to various physiological and pathological conditions. The plethora of proven methods, models, and optimization approaches in MC enable macroscale breath analysis, treating humans as the transmitter, the breath as the information carrier, and macroscale sensors as the receiver. Using ABMC to interface with the inherent dynamic networks of cells, tissues, and organs could create a novel Internet of Bio Things (IoBT), a preliminary macroscale stage of the IoBNT. This survey extensively reviews exhaled breath modeling and analysis through the lens of MC, offering insights into theoretical frameworks and practical implementations from ABMC, bringing the IoBT a step closer to real-world use.
  (link to more information)

• New IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications article

  August 23, 2025
  
  Our article Machine Learning-Driven Localization of Infection Sources in the Human Cardiovascular System has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications. In vivo localization of infection sources is essential for effective diagnosis and targeted disease treatment. In this work, we leverage machine learning models to associate the temporal dynamics of biomarkers detected at static gateway positions with different infection source locations. In particular, we introduce a simulation that models infection sources, the release of biomarkers, and their decay as they flow through the bloodstream. From this, we extract time-series biomarker data with varying decay rates to capture temporal patterns from different infection sources at specific gateway positions. We then train a stacked ensemble model using LightGBM and BernoulliNB to analyze biomarker time-series data for classification. Our results reveal that higher biomarker degradation rates significantly reduce the localization accuracy by limiting the biomarker signal detected at the gateways. A fivefold increase in decay rate lowers the mean cross-validation accuracy from ∼92% to ∼66%.
  (link to more information)

• New IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications article

  August 17, 2025
  
  Our article Blood Makes a Difference: Experimental Evaluation of Molecular Communication in Different Fluids has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications. The experimental appraisal of existing molecular communication (MC) testbeds and modeling frameworks in real blood is an important step for future internet of bio-nano-things applications. In this paper, we experimentally compare the MC flow characteristics of water, blood substitute, and real porcine blood for a previously presented superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) MC testbed. We perform an extensive analysis of the system impulse response behavior of the testbed for the different fluids. Based on the identified MC flow characteristics, we extend an existing mathematical framework for our SPION testbed to capture the flow properties of blood. We evaluate its applicability to the collected data in comparison to two existing theoretical SIR models for MC in blood. In our work, we see that the added complexity of the transmission in blood opens up promising new possibilities to improve communication through the human circulatory system.
  (link to more information)

• New IEEE Internet of Things Journal article

  August 14, 2025
  
  Our article Zero-Trust Foundation Models: A New Paradigm for Secure and Collaborative Artificial Intelligence for Internet of Things has been accepted for publication in IEEE Internet of Things Journal. This paper focuses on Zero-Trust Foundation Models (ZTFMs), a novel paradigm that embeds zero-trust security principles into the lifecycle of foundation models (FMs) for Internet of Things (IoT) systems. By integrating core tenets, such as continuous verification, least privilege access (LPA), data confidentiality, and behavioral analytics into the design, training, and deployment of FMs, ZTFMs can enable secure, privacy-preserving AI across distributed, heterogeneous, and potentially adversarial IoT environments. We present the first structured synthesis of ZTFMs, identifying their potential to transform conventional trust-based IoT architectures into resilient, self-defending ecosystems. Moreover, we propose a comprehensive technical framework, incorporating federated learning (FL), blockchain-based identity management, micro-segmentation, and trusted execution environments (TEEs) to support decentralized, verifiable intelligence at the network edge. In addition, we investigate emerging security threats unique to ZTFM-enabled systems and evaluate countermeasures, such as anomaly detection, adversarial training, and secure aggregation. Through this analysis, we highlight key open research challenges in terms of scalability, secure orchestration, interpretable threat attribution, and dynamic trust calibration. This survey lays a foundational roadmap for secure, intelligent, and trustworthy IoT infrastructures powered by FMs.
  (link to more information)

• Paper Presentation at IEEE ICCCN 2025

  August 05, 2025
  
  Jakob Johannes Rühlow and Joana Angjo presented our paper Random Access in IRS-assisted 802.11 Networks at the The 34th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 2025), Tokyo, Japan. This work investigates the performance of IRS-assisted networks working based on CSMA/CA random access. Upon showing that these scenarios are prone to hidden terminals, we propse two solutions towards them, which are also based on usage of IRS. To evaluate them, a new ns-3 framework is developed, ns3IRS, which enables modelling the full-stack IRS-assisted Wi-Fi networks. The two mitigation strategies are splitting a centralized IRS or deploying small IRSs near the stations. Results show these methods enhance the networks performance in terms of several key performance indicators, showing that a strategic deployment of IRS can also help in mitigating the hidden terminals it creates in the first place.
  

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