Security and Privacy: Key Requirements for Molecular Communication in Medicine and Healthcare
Vida Gholamiyan, Yaning Zhao, Wafa Labidi, Holger Boche, Christian Deppe
TL;DR
The paper addresses security and privacy challenges in molecular communication (MC) for medical and healthcare contexts, focusing on event-triggered, goal-oriented identification over degraded discrete-time Poisson wiretap channels (DT-PWC). It surveys an information-theoretic framework that uses secure identification to enhance robustness and efficiency, introducing capacity notions such as $C(W)$, $C_s(W,V)$, and $C_{s,ID}$ and proposing a concatenated coding approach that combines transmission and wiretap codes. A key result is the expression $C_s(W,V)=\max_{P_X}(I(X;Y) - I(X;Z))$, and the work notes that secure identification over DT-PWC remains an open problem, motivating further research toward secure MC in future 6G-biomedical networks. The significance lies in enabling secure, low-latency identification within IoBNT and MC-6G integrations, supporting applications like targeted therapy, diagnostics, and health monitoring while mitigating interception risks.
Abstract
Molecular communication (MC) is an emerging paradigm that enables data transmission through biochemical signals rather than traditional electromagnetic waves. This approach is particularly promising for environments where conventional wireless communication is impractical, such as within the human body. However, security and privacy pose significant challenges that must be addressed to ensure reliable communication. Moreover, MC is often event-triggered, making it logical to adopt goal-oriented communication strategies, similar to those used in message identification. This work explores secure identification strategies for MC, with a focus on the information-theoretic security of message identification over Poisson wiretap channels (DT-PWC).