In this letter, we propose a new molecular modulation scheme for nanonetworks. To evaluate the scheme we introduce a more realistic system model for molecule dissemination and propagation processes based on the Poisson distribution. We derive the probability of error of our proposed scheme as well as the previously introduced schemes, including concentration and molecular shift keying modulations by taking into account the error propagation effect of previously decoded symbols. Since in our scheme the decoding of the current symbol does not depend on the previously transmitted and decoded symbols, we do not encounter error propagation; and so as our numerical results indicate, the proposed scheme outperforms the previously introduced schemes. We then introduce a general molecular communication system and use information theoretic tools to derive fundamental limits on its probability of error.

In this paper, a diffusion-based molecular communication channel between two nano-machines is considered. The effect of the amount of memory on performance is characterized, and a simple memory-limited decoder is proposed; its performance is shown to be close to that of the best possible decoder (without any restrictions on the computational complexity or its functional form), using Genie-aided upper bounds. This effect is adapted to the case of Molecular Concentration Shift Keying; it is shown that a four-bits memory achieves nearly the same performance as infinite memory for all of the examples considered. A general class of threshold decoders is considered and shown to be suboptimal for a Poisson channel with memory, unless the SNR is higher than a value specified in the paper. During each symbol duration (symbol period), the probability that a released molecule hits the receiver, changes over the duration of the period; thus, we also consider a receiver that samples at a rate higher than the transmission rate (a multiread system). A multi-read system improves performance. The associated decision rule for this system is shown to be a weighted sum of the samples during each symbol interval. The performance of the system is analyzed using the saddle point approximation. The best performance gains are achieved for an oversampling factor of three for the examples considered.

Abstract-This paper studies the problem of receiver modeling in molecular communication systems. We consider the diffusive molecular communication channel between a transmitter nanomachine and a receiver nano-machine in a fluid environment. The information molecules released by the transmitter nano-machine into the environment can degrade in the channel via a first-order degradation reaction and those that reach the receiver nanomachine can participate in a reversible bimolecular reaction with receiver receptor proteins. Thereby, we distinguish between two scenarios. In the first scenario, we assume that the entire surface of the receiver is covered by receptor molecules. We derive a closed-form analytical expression for the expected received signal at the receiver, i.e., the expected number of activated receptors on the surface of the receiver. Then, in the second scenario, we consider the case where the number of receptor molecules is finite and the uniformly distributed receptor molecules cover the receiver surface only partially. We show that the expected received signal for this scenario can be accurately approximated by the expected received signal for the first scenario after appropriately modifying the forward reaction rate constant. The accuracy of the derived analytical results is verified by Brownian motion particle-based simulations of the considered environment, where we also show the impact of the effect of receptor occupancy on the derived analytical results.

No abstract

In diffusion-based molecular communication (DMC), a transmitter nanomachine is responsible for signal modulation. Thereby, the transmitter has to be able to control the release of the signaling molecules employed for representing the transmitted information. In nature, an important class of control mechanisms for releasing molecules from cells utilizes ion channels which are pore-forming proteins across the cell membrane. The opening and closing of the ion channels is controlled by a gating parameter. In this paper, an ion channel based modulator for DMC is proposed which controls the rate of molecule release from the transmitter by modulating a gating parameter signal. Exploiting the capabilities of the proposed modulator, an on-off keying modulation technique is introduced and the corresponding average modulated signal, i.e., the average release rate of the molecules from the transmitter, is analyzed. However, since the modulated signal is random in nature, it may deviate from its average. Therefore, the concept of modulator noise is introduced and the statistics of the modulated signal are investigated. Finally, by assuming a simple transparent receiver, the performance of the proposed on-off keying modulation format is studied. The derived analytical expressions for the average modulated signal are confirmed with particle based simulations. Our numerical results reveal that performance estimates of DMC systems obtained based on the assumption of instantaneous molecule release at the transmitter may substantially deviate from the performance achieved with practical modulators.