The 2 MOST IMPORTANT Equations for Diffusion-Based Communication

This video covers what is arguably the most fundamental theory used in diffusion-based molecular communication – Fick’s Laws of Diffusion. Fick’s Second Law, which is derived from Fick’s First Law and is also known as the Diffusion Equation, is the starting point for mathematically modeling the propagation of diffusion signals. An important disclaimer: Fick’s Laws of Diffusion cover one type of diffusion – the aptly named “Fickian diffusion”. Any type of diffusion that does not follow Fick’s laws is categorized as “non-Fickian diffusion”. There are important environmental assumptions that need to hold in order to assume that diffusion will be Fickian. Cited video “Micro Molecule Diffusion”: https://youtu.be/QOQluKgBuIw Playlist of Research Microlectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMvASFe5ep-56D9H1ESydX7qzIKkR4VYD Further Related Reading (with commentary): * Berg’s Random Walks in Biology (Princeton University Press, 1984: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691000640/random-walks-in-biology) provides a good accessible introduction to Fick’s laws. The book was written for a biology student with a limited physics background, so its mathematical presentation is (relatively) accessible. * Jamali et al.’s “Channel Modeling for Diffusive Molecular Communication - A Tutorial Review” ( Proceedings of the IEEE, 2019: https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2019.2919455) reviews diffusion and includes solutions to Fick’s laws (and extensions to them) for many environments that have been popular for molecular communications research. * Nelson’s Biological Physics: Energy, Information, Life (Chiliagon Science, 2020: https://www.physics.upenn.edu/biophys/BPse/) is a great interdisciplinary text that targets all of life science, physics, and engineering undergraduates. It’s more rigorous and comprehensive than Berg, though diffusion is a relatively much smaller component. * Crank’s The Mathematics of Diffusion (Oxford University Press, 1975: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematics-Diffusion-Oxford-Science-Publications/dp/0198534116) is a detailed tome of solutions to Fick’s laws for a large number of environments. * The Wikipedia entry for Fick’s Laws of Diffusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick%27s_laws_of_diffusion) is a reasonably good resource with examples from different fields and generalizations of the math for more complex environments. The Biophysical Communication Engineering Lab is a research group studying biophysical signal propagation, cellular signal processing, and molecular communication engineering. It is led by Dr. Adam Noel, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Website: https://www.engr.mun.ca/~adamnoel/ Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:48 Background on Fick 01:07 Fick’s First Law 02:42 Fick’s Second Law 03:08 Direct Contact Examples 03:31 Recap and Outro #molecularcommunication #communicationengineering #research #ComSoc #biomedicalengineering #biophysics #diffusion #Fick #Fickslaws