Towards High Data-Rate Diffusive Molecular Communications: Performance Enhancement Strategies

Abstract

Diffusive molecular communications (DiMC) have recently gained attention as a candidate for nano- to micro- and macro-scale communications due to its simplicity and energy efficiency. As signal propagation is solely enabled by Brownian motion mechanics, DiMC faces severe inter-symbol interference (ISI), which limits reliable and high data-rate communications. Herein, recent literature on DiMC performance enhancement strategies is surveyed; key research directions are identified. Signaling design and associated design constraints are presented. Classical and novel transceiver designs are reviewed with an emphasis on methods for ISI mitigation and performance-complexity tradeoffs. Key parameter estimation strategies such as synchronization and channel estimation are considered in conjunction with asynchronous and timing error robust receiver methods. Finally, source and channel coding in the context of DiMC is presented.

19 pages, 15 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Transmitter and Receiver Architectures for Molecular Communications: A Survey on Physical Design with Modulation, Coding and Detection Techniques
• Channel Estimation for Diffusive Molecular Communications
• A Stochastic Model for Electron Transfer in Bacterial Cables
• On the Capacity of the Joint Time and Concentration Modulation for Molecular Communications