Communication through complex media: a novel interdisciplinary paradigm to bridge information theory and multiscale flow and transport theory.

各种工业应用都面临着理解和控制复杂非均质介质中反应输运过程的挑战。特别是，石油和天然气以及可再生能源部门严重依赖多尺度多孔材料的建模和模拟，以及复杂的下游炼油和化学加工操作。从这些系统中提取有价值的数据和信息进行监测和控制对于确保安全和提高效率至关重要。目前正在为此目的开发和测试用于嵌入式传感和驱动的纳米传感器网络。然而，在复杂的传输现象和恶劣环境下，设计鲁棒和最佳的通信策略仍然具有挑战性。新的通信范式，如自然启发的分子通信，已经发展到研究化学简单对流扩散过程的通信内容。然而，我们目前还不了解更复杂的传输模型的通信潜力。因此，该项目的目标是发展复杂多尺度环境中粒子和波传输的信息理论框架的数学基础。将开发适合模拟真实多孔介质中溶质和粒子传输的流体动力学模型，并进行分析和数值研究，通过量化感兴趣的通信相关量。然后可以通过改变控制物理化学参数和不同的信号编码来优化通信信道。这将适用于纳米粒子技术的应用，这要归功于TOTAL的合作。

A variety of industrial applications are faced with challenges in understanding and control reactive transport processes in complex heterogeneous media. In particular, the Oil&Gas and renewable energy sector strongly relies on the modelling and simulation of multiscale porous materials, as well as complex downstream refining and chemical processing operations. Extracting valuable data and information from these systems for monitoring and control is crucial to ensure safety and increase efficiencies. Networks of nano-sensors for embedded sensing and actuation are currently being developed and tested to this aim.However, the design of robust and optimal communication strategies, in presence of complex transport phenomena and harsh environments remains challenging. New communication paradigms, such as the nature-inspired molecular communication, have been developed to study the communication content of chemical simple advection-diffusion processes. However, we currently have no understanding of the potential for communication of more complex transport models.The goal of the project is, therefore, to develop the mathematical basis of an information theoretical framework for transport of particles and waves in complex multiscale environments.Fluid dynamics model suitable for modelling the transport of solutes and particles in realistic porous media will be developed and studied analytically and numerically, by quantifying communication-relevant quantities of interest. The communication channel can be then optimised varying controlling physicochemical parameters and different signal encoding. This will be applied to nanoparticle technologies application thanks to the collaboration of TOTAL.