A Novel Electrical Model for Advection-Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication in Nanonetworks

IEEE Trans Nanobioscience. 2016 Apr;15(3):246-57. doi: 10.1109/TNB.2016.2546460. Epub 2016 Mar 24.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an end-to-end electrical model to characterize the communication between two nanomachines via advection-diffusion motion along the conventional pipe medium. For this modeling, we consider three modules consisting of transmitter, advection-diffusion propagation and receiver. The modulation scheme and releasing molecules through the conventional pipe medium from the transmitter nanomachine is represented in the transmitter module. The advection-diffusion propagation of molecules along the flow-induced path is shown in advection-diffusion propagation module, and the demodulation scheme of bounded particles at the receiver nanomachine is characterized in the receiver module. Our objective is to find an electrical model of each module under the zero initial condition which enables us to represent the electrical circuit related to each module. The transmitter and the signal propagation models are built on the basis of the molecular advection-diffusion physics, whereas the receiver model is interpreted by stemming from the theory of the ligand-receptor binding chemical process. In addition, we employ the transfer function of modules to derive the normalized gain and the delay of each module. Supported by numerical results, we analyze the effect of physical parameters of the pipe medium on the total normalized gain and delay of molecular communications.

MeSH terms

  • Computer Simulation
  • Computers, Molecular*
  • Diffusion
  • Electricity
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Nanotechnology / methods*