Molecular Signal Modeling of a Partially Counting Absorbing Spherical Receiver

To communicate at the nanoscale, researchers have proposed molecular communication as an energy-efficient solution. The drawback to this solution is that the histogram of the molecules' hitting times, which constitute the molecular signal at the receiver, has a heavy tail. Reducing the effects of this heavy tail, inter-symbol interference (ISI), has been the focus of most prior research. In this paper, a novel way of decreasing the ISI by defining a counting region on the spherical receiver's surface facing towards the transmitter node is proposed. The beneficial effect comes from the fact that the molecules received from the back lobe of the receiver are more likely to be coming through longer paths that contribute to ISI. In order to justify this idea, the joint distribution of the arrival molecules with respect to angle and time is derived. Using this distribution, the channel model function is approximated for the proposed system, i.e., the partially counting absorbing spherical receiver. After validating the channel model function, the characteristics of the molecular signal are investigated and improved performance is presented. Moreover, the optimal counting region in terms of bit error rate is found analytically.Comment: submitted to Transactions on Communication

Analyzing Large-Scale Multiuser Molecular Communication via 3D Stochastic Geometry

arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1605.08311arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1605.08311Information delivery using chemical molecules is an integral part of biology at multiple distance scales and has attracted recent interest in bioengineering and communication theory. Potential applications include cooperative networks with a large number of simple devices that could be randomly located (e.g., due to mobility). This paper presents the first tractable analytical model for the collective signal strength due to randomly-placed transmitters in a three-dimensional (3D) large-scale molecular communication system, either with or without degradation in the propagation environment. Transmitter locations in an unbounded and homogeneous fluid are modelled as a homogeneous Poisson point process. By applying stochastic geometry, analytical expressions are derived for the expected number of molecules absorbed by a fully-absorbing receiver or observed by a passive receiver. The bit error probability is derived under ON/OFF keying and either a constant or adaptive decision threshold. Results reveal that the combined signal strength increases proportionately with the transmitter density, and the minimum bit error probability can be improved by introducing molecule degradation. Furthermore, the analysis of the system can be generalized to other receiver designs and other performance characteristics in large-scale molecular communication systems