Adaptive detection and ISI mitigation for mobile molecular communication

Current studies on modulation and detection schemes in molecular communication mainly focus on the scenarios with static transmitters and receivers. However, mobile molecular communication is needed in many envisioned applications, such as target tracking and drug delivery. Until now, investigations about mobile molecular communication have been limited. In this paper, a static transmitter and a mobile bacterium-based receiver performing random walk are considered. In this mobile scenario, the channel impulse response changes due to the dynamic change of the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. Detection schemes based on fixed distance fail in signal detection in such a scenario. Furthermore, the intersymbol interference (ISI) effect becomes more complex due to the dynamic character of the signal which makes the estimation and mitigation of the ISI even more difficult. In this paper, an adaptive ISI mitigation method and two adaptive detection schemes are proposed for this mobile scenario. In the proposed scheme, adaptive ISI mitigation, estimation of dynamic distance and the corresponding impulse response reconstruction are performed in each symbol interval. Based on the dynamic channel impulse response in each interval, two adaptive detection schemes, concentration-based adaptive threshold detection (CATD) and peak-time-based adaptive detection (PAD), are proposed for signal detection. Simulations demonstrate that, the ISI effect is significantly reduced and the adaptive detection schemes are reliable and robust for mobile molecular communication

Modulation Analysis in Macro-Molecular Communications

Molecular communication (MC) involves the transmission of information using particles (i.e., molecules). Research into the field has been dominated by micro-scale, and most of the effects of macro-scale communication have yet to be studied. In this paper, the modulation and transmission of MC at macro-scale are investigated. For the transmitter, an in-house-built odor generator was used, and as the detector, a mass spectrometer with a quadrupole mass analyzer was employed. Various 2-level, 4-level, and 8-level modulation schemes were tested experimentally. A simulation framework, developed for the first time, was used for comparison with the experimental results. It was shown that communication can be modeled using a variant of the advection-diffusion equation and that it gives good agreement with the experimental results. A symbol-error-rate (SER) analysis of both the experimental and simulation results was analyzed. It was found that increasing the distance has a detrimental effect on both the channel capacity and the SER, whereas velocity and diffusivity have a decreasing effect on the SER and an increasing effect on the channel capacity. A channel model was developed based on the asymmetric behavior of the communications, and the optimal sampling period was developed that subsequently permitted analysis of the ISI of the communications scheme

A Survey on Modulation Techniques in Molecular Communication via Diffusion

This survey paper focuses on modulation aspects of molecular communication, an emerging field focused on building biologically-inspired systems that embed data within chemical signals. The primary challenges in designing these systems are how to encode and modulate information onto chemical signals, and how to design a receiver that can detect and decode the information from the corrupted chemical signal observed at the destination. In this paper, we focus on modulation design for molecular communication via diffusion systems. In these systems, chemical signals are transported using diffusion, possibly assisted by flow, from the transmitter to the receiver. This tutorial presents recent advancements in modulation and demodulation schemes for molecular communication via diffusion. We compare five different modulation types: concentration-based, type-based, timing-based, spatial, and higher-order modulation techniques. The end-to-end system designs for each modulation scheme are presented. In addition, the key metrics used in the literature to evaluate the performance of these techniques are also presented. Finally, we provide a numerical bit error rate comparison of prominent modulation techniques using analytical models. We close the tutorial with a discussion of key open issues and future research directions for design of molecular communication via diffusion systems.Comment: Preprint of the accepted manuscript for publication in IEEE Surveys and Tutorial

Local convexity inspired low-complexity non-coherent signal detector for nano-scale molecular communications

Molecular communications via diffusion (MCvD) represents a relatively new area of wireless data transfer with especially attractive characteristics for nanoscale applications. Due to the nature of diffusive propagation, one of the key challenges is to mitigate inter-symbol interference (ISI) that results from the long tail of channel response. Traditional coherent detectors rely on accurate channel estimations and incur a high computational complexity. Both of these constraints make coherent detection unrealistic for MCvD systems. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity and noncoherent signal detector, which exploits essentially the local convexity of the diffusive channel response. A threshold estimation mechanism is proposed to detect signals blindly, which can also adapt to channel variations. Compared to other noncoherent detectors, the proposed algorithm is capable of operating at high data rates and suppressing ISI from a large number of previous symbols. Numerical results demonstrate that not only is the ISI effectively suppressed, but the complexity is also reduced by only requiring summation operations. As a result, the proposed noncoherent scheme will provide the necessary potential to low-complexity molecular communications, especially for nanoscale applications with a limited computation and energy budget

Transmitter precoding for multi-antenna multi-user communications

Emerging wireless sensor networks and existing wireless cellular and ad hoc networks motivate the design of low-power receivers. Multi-user interference drastically reduces the energy efficiency of wireless multi-user communications by introducing errors in the bits being detected at the receiver. Interference rejection algorithms and multiple antenna techniques can significantly reduce the bit-error-rate at the receiver. Unfortunately, while interference rejection algorithms burden the receiver with heavy signal processing functionalities, thereby increasing the power consumption at the receiver, the small size of receivers, specifically in sensor networks and in downlink cellular communications, prohibits the use of multiple receive antennas. In a broadcast channel, where a central transmitter is transmitting independent streams to decentralized receivers, it is possible for the transmitter to have a priori knowledge of the interference. Multiple antennas can be used at the transmitter to enhance energy efficiency. In some systems, the transmitter has access to virtually an infinite source of power. A typical example would be the base station transmitter for the downlink of a cellular system. The power consumption at receivers can be reduced if some of the signal processing functionality of the receiver is moved to the transmitter.;In this thesis, we consider a wireless broadcast channel with a transmitter equipped with multiple antennas and having a priori knowledge of interference. Our objective is to minimize the receiver complexity by adding extra signal processing functions to the transmitter. We need to determine the optimal signal that should be transmitted so that interference is completely eliminated, and the benefits that can be obtained by using multiple transmit antennas can be maximized. We investigate the use of linear precoders, linear transformations made on the signal before transmission, for this purpose