Molecular Communication in Fluid Media: The Additive Inverse Gaussian Noise Channel

作者：Srinivas K V^*; Eckford Andrew W; Adve Raviraj S

来源：IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 2012, 58(7): 4678-4692.

DOI：10.1109/TIT.2012.2193554

• Molecular communication
• mutual information
• nanobiotechnology

In this paper, we consider molecular communication, with information conveyed in the time of release of molecules. These molecules propagate to the transmitter through a fluid medium, propelled by a positive drift velocity and Brownian motion. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a theoretical foundation for such a communication system; specifically, the additive inverse Gaussian noise (AIGN) channel model. In such a channel, the information is corrupted by noise that follows an IG distribution. We show that such a channel model is appropriate for molecular communication in fluid media. Taking advantage of the available literature on the IG distribution, upper and lower bounds on channel capacity are developed, and a maximum likelihood receiver is derived. Results are presented which suggest that this channel does not have a single quality measure analogous to signal-to-noise ratio in the additive white Gaussian noise channel. It is also shown that the use of multiple molecules leads to reduced error rate in a manner akin to diversity order in wireless communications. Finally, some open problems are discussed that arise from the IG channel model.

• 出版日期2012-7