Simulating the performance of SW-ARQ schemes within molecular communications

Abstract

This paper provides results on an investigation concerning the application of five tailored Stop-and-Wait Automatic Repeat reQuest (SW-ARQ) schemes to a diffusion based molecular communication system. Each scheme is numerically simulated and evaluated to determine its performance with regards to average time cost and energy consumption. It is shown that all five schemes are beneficial depending upon the application scenario. Scheme 1 is the best choice for adjacent communications although, if a slightly higher energy budget can be afforded, schemes 2 and 3 will provide better performance than scheme 1 as the communication distance increases. Schemes 4 and 5 are designed to benefit scenarios with either a varying channel or for a channel with unknown parameters although will also benefit a static channel if again, further system energy can be utilised. This optimisation and trade-off between time and energy requirement for a complete successful transmission will become more important in future applications involving molecular communications where energy efficiency is a design consideration.

A feedback-based molecular communication protocol for noisy intrabody environments

“…This paper is similar to [13], [14] in that the two papers utilize SW-ARQ. In addition to diffusive transport, this paper examines directional and diffusive-directional hybrid transports in noisy environments where noise molecules exist and molecules collide with each other.…”

“…In-sequence molecular transmission is studied with SW-ARQ schemes for diffusive transport in [13] and bacterial communication in [14]. This paper is similar to [13], [14] in that the two papers utilize SW-ARQ.…”

Impacts of Erasure Coding on Robustness against Molecular Packet Losses in Aqueous, Collisional Environments

“…There exist several relevant work to enhance the reliability of short-range molecular communication in aqueous environments [3,7,16,21,30]. Nakano et al [21] and Felicetti et al [7] study feedbackbased rate control schemes for diffusive molecule propagation.…”

“…While in-sequence delivery of information molecules is out of the scope of [7,21], Wang et al [30], Bai et al [3] and Mitzman et al [16] study in-sequence and at-least-once delivery schemes with positive feedbacks. The Rx is designed to explicitly acknowledge information molecules and request the Tx to retransmit lost ones based on Stop-and-Wait Automatic Repeat Request (SW-ARQ) [5].…”

TCP-Like Molecular Communications

“…Thus, for synchronizing the receiver, we made use of a line coding consisting of a further bit 1 attached to the Huffman codewords, obtaining HALVE="10", STOP="111", and START="110". We do not use ARQ techniques to acknowledge these messages, as illustrated in [46], since it would need an additional molecule type to be used from TX to RX to carry these acknowledgments, different from S molecules.…”