Design and Performance Analysis of Dual and Multi-hop Diffusive Molecular Communication Systems

Abstract: This work presents a comprehensive performance analysis of diffusion based direct, dual-hop, and multi-hop molecular communication systems with Brownian motion and drift in the presence of various distortions such as inter-symbol interference (ISI), multi-source interference (MSI), and counting errors. Optimal decision rules are derived employing the likelihood ratio tests (LRTs) for symbol detection at each of the cooperative as well as the destination nanomachines. Further, closed-form expressions are also derived for the probabilities of detection, false alarm at the individual cooperative, destination nanomachines, as well as the overall end-to-end probability of error for source-destination communication. The results also characterize the impact of detection performance of the intermediate cooperative nanomachine(s) on the end-to-end performance of dual/multi hop diffusive molecular communication systems. In addition, capacity expressions are also derived for direct, dual-hop, and multi-hop molecular communication scenarios. Simulation results are presented to corroborate the theoretical results derived and also, to yield insights into system performance.