transmitting information with microfluidic systems andrea biral, davide zordan, andrea zanella...
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Transmitting Information with Microfluidic SystemsAndrea Biral, Davide Zordan, Andrea ZanellaICC2015 8-12 June 2015, London, [email protected]
1OutlineMicrofluidics and its applicationsLab on a ChipResearch interestsOur contributionTransmitting information with microfluidic circuitsPAM-like codingExperimental setupResultsConclusion2Microfluidics3Microfluidics is both a science and a technology that deals with the control of small amounts of fluids flowing through microchannels
Droplet microfluidicsDroplets (dispersed phase) encapsulating samples and reagents are dispersed into an immiscibile fluid (continuous phase)
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Boolean microfluidicM Prakash, N Gershenfeld - Science, 2007 Microfluidic bubble logic
De Leo et al. TCOM 2013 Communications and Switching in Microfluidic Systems: Pure Hydrodynamic Control for Networking Labs-on-a-Chip 4Our contributionAdd communication capabilities in microfluidic systemsTransmit information in a microfluidic channel by means of a PAM like modulationUse droplet length/interdistance to code the informationEvaluate system performance on a real case scenario
5Droplets generation By changing input parameters, you can control (average) droplets length and spacing, but NOT independently!
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(volumetric flow rate Qd)(volumetric flow rate Qc)Constant (~1)
Modulation Bit string 00011011
PAM symbols 0 1 2 3
Droplet length
Dispersed phase flow0.5 11.5 2 [l/min]
Continuous phase flow 5 [l/min]
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Experimental setup8
Continuous Phase(Hexadecane + Span80)Dispersed Phase(Water + Glycerol)
Frame processing9
Camera frame
Binary image
Lowpass Wiener filterMedian filter
Connected components identification
Droplet lengths
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We assume that the length(interdistance) can be modeled as a Gaussian RV
The assumption can be validated comparing the empirical and theoretical CDFs
Droplets length distribution 11
Symbols PDFs
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Error probability13
Assuming equally likely symbolsDroplet-length PAMInter-droplet distance PAMWrapping upThis work:investigated the feasibility of extending communication concept to microfluidicsimplemented basic modulation technique based on length/interdistance evaluated system performance with experimental dataBoth droplet length and inter-droplet distance can carry information bitsInter-distance is generally preferable BUT, in complex network, it can vary as droplets stream along the channels See Biral & Zanella, NanoComNet 201314Looking forward15
Transient characterizationTime to change modulated symbolRelated to symbol periodDepends on the distance between symbols symbol-dependent transmission ratemore sophisticated modulationsCombining length and distanceUsing other circuits to dynamically change droplet inter-distanceconsider other performance indexesthroughput, delay, energy consumption
Transmitting Information with Microfluidic SystemsAndrea Biral, Davide Zordan, Andrea Zanella
Any questions?16Microfluidic application:Lab on a Chip
17 thinXXS MicrotechnologyMicrofluidic research:Tunable filters, Optical Switches,
Switching Fiber-Optic Circuits with Microscopic Bubbles John Uebbing, Agilent Technologies
Chin, L. K.; Liu, A.Q.; Zhang, J.B.; Lim, C. S.; Soh, Y. C., "An on-chip liquid tunable grating using multiphase droplet microfluidics,"Applied Physics Letters, vol.93, no.16, pp.164107,164107-3, Oct 200818