A comprehensive survey of recent advancements in molecular communication

With much advancement in the field of nanotechnology, bioengineering and synthetic biology over the past decade, microscales and nanoscales devices are becoming a reality. Yet the problem of engineering a reliable communication system between tiny devices is still an open problem. At the same time, despite the prevalence of radio communication, there are still areas where traditional electromagnetic waves find it difficult or expensive to reach. Points of interest in industry, cities, and medical applications often lie in embedded and entrenched areas, accessible only by ventricles at scales too small for conventional radio waves and microwaves, or they are located in such a way that directional high frequency systems are ineffective. Inspired by nature, one solution to these problems is molecular communication (MC), where chemical signals are used to transfer information. Although biologists have studied MC for decades, it has only been researched for roughly 10 year from a communication engineering lens. Significant number of papers have been published to date, but owing to the need for interdisciplinary work, much of the results are preliminary. In this paper, the recent advancements in the field of MC engineering are highlighted. First, the biological, chemical, and physical processes used by an MC system are discussed. This includes different components of the MC transmitter and receiver, as well as the propagation and transport mechanisms. Then, a comprehensive survey of some of the recent works on MC through a communication engineering lens is provided. The paper ends with a technology readiness analysis of MC and future research directions

Molecular communication networks with general molecular circuit receivers

In a molecular communication network, transmitters may encode information in concentration or frequency of signalling molecules. When the signalling molecules reach the receivers, they react, via a set of chemical reactions or a molecular circuit, to produce output molecules. The counts of output molecules over time is the output signal of the receiver. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of different reaction types on the information transmission capacity of molecular communication networks. We realise this aim by using a general molecular circuit model. We derive general expressions of mean receiver output, and signal and noise spectra. We use these expressions to investigate the information transmission capacities of a number of molecular circuits

Scaling laws for molecular communication

In this paper, we investigate information-theoretic scaling laws, independent from communication strategies, for point-to-point molecular communication, where it sends/receives information-encoded molecules between nanomachines. Since the Shannon capacity for this is still an open problem, we first derive an asymptotic order in a single coordinate, i.e., i) scaling time with constant number of molecules $m$ and ii) scaling molecules with constant time $t$. For a single coordinate case, we show that the asymptotic scaling is logarithmic in either coordinate, i.e., $\Theta(\log t)$ and $\Theta(\log m)$, respectively. We also study asymptotic behavior of scaling in both time and molecules and show that, if molecules and time are proportional to each other, then the asymptotic scaling is linear, i.e., $\Theta(t)=\Theta(m)$.Comment: Accepted for publication in the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theor

Diffusion-controlled interface kinetics-inclusive system-theoretic propagation models for molecular communication systems

Inspired by biological systems, molecular communication has been proposed as a new communication paradigm that uses biochemical signals to transfer information from one nano device to another over a short distance. The biochemical nature of the information transfer process implies that for molecular communication purposes, the development of molecular channel models should take into consideration diffusion phenomenon as well as the physical/biochemical kinetic possibilities of the process. The physical and biochemical kinetics arise at the interfaces between the diffusion channel and the transmitter/receiver units. These interfaces are herein termed molecular antennas. In this paper, we present the deterministic propagation model of the molecular communication between an immobilized nanotransmitter and nanoreceiver, where the emission and reception kinetics are taken into consideration. Specifically, we derived closed-form system-theoretic models and expressions for configurations that represent different communication systems based on the type of molecular antennas used. The antennas considered are the nanopores at the transmitter and the surface receptor proteins/enzymes at the receiver. The developed models are simulated to show the influence of parameters such as the receiver radius, surface receptor protein/enzyme concentration, and various reaction rate constants. Results show that the effective receiver surface area and the rate constants are important to the system’s output performance. Assuming high rate of catalysis, the analysis of the frequency behavior of the developed propagation channels in the form of transfer functions shows significant difference introduce by the inclusion of the molecular antennas into the diffusion-only model. It is also shown that for t > > 0 and with the information molecules’ concentration greater than the Michaelis-Menten kinetic constant of the systems, the inclusion of surface receptors proteins and enzymes in the models makes the system act like a band-stop filter over an infinite frequency range.The Sentech Chair in Broadband Wireless Multimedia Communications (BWMC) at the University of Pretoria and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) THRIP Program.http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asp/am201

Transmitter and Receiver Architectures for Molecular Communications: A Survey on Physical Design with Modulation, Coding, and Detection Techniques

Inspired by nature, molecular communications (MC), i.e., the use of molecules to encode, transmit, and receive information, stands as the most promising communication paradigm to realize the nanonetworks. Even though there has been extensive theoretical research toward nanoscale MC, there are no examples of implemented nanoscale MC networks. The main reason for this lies in the peculiarities of nanoscale physics, challenges in nanoscale fabrication, and highly stochastic nature of the biochemical domain of envisioned nanonetwork applications. This mandates developing novel device architectures and communication methods compatible with MC constraints. To that end, various transmitter and receiver designs for MC have been proposed in the literature together with numerable modulation, coding, and detection techniques. However, these works fall into domains of a very wide spectrum of disciplines, including, but not limited to, information and communication theory, quantum physics, materials science, nanofabrication, physiology, and synthetic biology. Therefore, we believe it is imperative for the progress of the field that an organized exposition of cumulative knowledge on the subject matter can be compiled. Thus, to fill this gap, in this comprehensive survey, we review the existing literature on transmitter and receiver architectures toward realizing MC among nanomaterial-based nanomachines and/or biological entities and provide a complete overview of modulation, coding, and detection techniques employed for MC. Moreover, we identify the most significant shortcomings and challenges in all these research areas and propose potential solutions to overcome some of them.This work was supported in part by the European Research Council (ERC) Projects MINERVA under Grant ERC-2013-CoG #616922 and MINERGRACE under Grant ERC-2017-PoC #780645

Fundamentals of diffusion-based molecular communication in nanonetworks

Molecular communication (MC) is a promising bio-inspired paradigm for the exchange of information among nanotechnology-enabled devices. These devices, called nanomachines, are expected to have the ability to sense, compute and actuate, and interconnect into networks, called nanonetworks, to overcome their individual limitations and benefit from collaborative efforts. MC realizes the exchange of information through the transmission, propagation, and reception of molecules, and it is proposed as a feasible solution for nanonetworks. This idea is motivated by the observation of nature, where MC is successfully adopted by cells for intracellular and intercellular communication. MC-based nanonetworks have the potential to be the enabling technology for a wide range of applications, mostly in the biomedical, but also in the industrial and surveillance fields. The focus of this Ph.D. thesis is on the most fundamental type of MC, i.e., diffusion-based MC, where the propagation of information-bearing molecules between a transmitter and a receiver is realized through free diffusion in a fluid. The objectives of the research presented in this thesis are to analyze the MC paradigm from the point of view of communication engineering and information theory, and to provide solutions to the modeling and design of MC-based nanonetworks. First, a physical end-to-end model is realized to study each component in a basic diffusion-based MC system design, as well as the overall system, in terms of gain and delay. Second, the noise sources affecting a diffusion-based MC are identified and statistically modeled. Third, upper/lower bounds to the capacity are derived to evaluate the information-theoretic performance of diffusion-based MC. Fourth, a stochastic analysis of the interference when multiple transmitters access the diffusion-based MC channel is provided. Fifth, as a proof of concept, a design of a diffusion-based MC system built upon genetically-engineered biological circuits is analyzed. This research provides fundamental results that establish a basis for the modeling, design, and realization of future MC-based nanonetworks, as novel technologies and tools are being developed.Ph.D