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

Abstract

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.