TY - JOUR
T1 - Simulation Study and Analysis of Diffusive Molecular Communications with an Apertured Plane
AU - Gursoy, Mustafa Can
AU - Birkan Yilmaz, H.
AU - Pusane, Ali E.
AU - Tugcu, Tuna
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 12, 2019; revised February 23, 2020 and April 4, 2020; accepted April 7, 2020. Date of publication April 9, 2020; date of current version July 1, 2020. This work was supported in part by the Turkish Directorate of Strategy and Budget under the TAM Grant 2007K12-873. (Corresponding author: Mustafa Can Gursoy.) Mustafa Can Gursoy is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA (e-mail: mgursoy@usc.edu).
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - Molecular communication via diffusion (MCvD) is a method of achieving nano-and micro-scale connectivity by utilizing the free diffusion mechanism of information molecules. The randomness in diffusive propagation is the main cause of inter-symbol interfe-rence (ISI) and the limiting factor of high data rate MCvD applications. In this paper, an apertured plane is considered between the transmitter and the receiver of an MCvD link. Either after being artificially placed or occurring naturally, surfaces or volumes that resemble an apertured plane only allow a fraction of the molecules to pass. Contrary to intuition, it is observed that such topology may improve communication performance, given the molecules that can pass through the aperture are the ones that take more directed paths towards the receiver. Furthermore, through both computer simulations and a theoretical signal evaluation metric named signal-to-interference and noise amplitude ratio (SINAR), it is found that the size of the aperture imposes a trade-off between the received signal power and the ISI combating capability of an MCvD system, hinting to an optimal aperture size that minimizes the bit error rate (BER). It is observed that the trend of BER is accurately mirrored by SINAR, suggesting the proposed metric's applicability to optimization tasks in MCvD systems, including finding the optimal aperture size of an apertured plane. In addition, computer simulations and SINAR show that said optimal aperture size is affected by the location of the aperture and the bit rate. Lastly, the paper analyzes the effects of radial and angular offsets in the placement of the apertured plane, and finds that a reduction in BER is still in effect up to certain offset values. Overall, our results imply that apertured plane-like surfaces may actually help communication efficiency, even though they reduce the received signal power.
AB - Molecular communication via diffusion (MCvD) is a method of achieving nano-and micro-scale connectivity by utilizing the free diffusion mechanism of information molecules. The randomness in diffusive propagation is the main cause of inter-symbol interfe-rence (ISI) and the limiting factor of high data rate MCvD applications. In this paper, an apertured plane is considered between the transmitter and the receiver of an MCvD link. Either after being artificially placed or occurring naturally, surfaces or volumes that resemble an apertured plane only allow a fraction of the molecules to pass. Contrary to intuition, it is observed that such topology may improve communication performance, given the molecules that can pass through the aperture are the ones that take more directed paths towards the receiver. Furthermore, through both computer simulations and a theoretical signal evaluation metric named signal-to-interference and noise amplitude ratio (SINAR), it is found that the size of the aperture imposes a trade-off between the received signal power and the ISI combating capability of an MCvD system, hinting to an optimal aperture size that minimizes the bit error rate (BER). It is observed that the trend of BER is accurately mirrored by SINAR, suggesting the proposed metric's applicability to optimization tasks in MCvD systems, including finding the optimal aperture size of an apertured plane. In addition, computer simulations and SINAR show that said optimal aperture size is affected by the location of the aperture and the bit rate. Lastly, the paper analyzes the effects of radial and angular offsets in the placement of the apertured plane, and finds that a reduction in BER is still in effect up to certain offset values. Overall, our results imply that apertured plane-like surfaces may actually help communication efficiency, even though they reduce the received signal power.
KW - Molecular communication via diffusion
KW - apertured plane
KW - bit error rate
KW - inter-symbol interference
KW - nanonetworks
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U2 - 10.1109/TNB.2020.2986998
DO - 10.1109/TNB.2020.2986998
M3 - Article
C2 - 32287002
AN - SCOPUS:85087466702
VL - 19
SP - 468
EP - 476
JO - IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience
JF - IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience
SN - 1536-1241
IS - 3
M1 - 9062603
ER -