Fundamentals of Clustered Molecular Nanonetworks

Abstract: We present a comprehensive approach to the modeling, performance analysis, and design of clustered molecular nanonetworks in which nano-machines of different clusters release an appropriate number of molecules to transmit their sensed information to their respective fusion centers. The fusion centers decode this information by counting the number of molecules received in the given time slot. Owing to the propagation properties of the biological media, this setup suffers from both inter- and intra-cluster interference that needs to be carefully modeled. To facilitate rigorous analysis, we first develop a novel spatial model for this setup by modeling nano-machines as a Poisson cluster process with the fusion centers forming its parent point process. For this setup, we first derive a new set of distance distributions in the three-dimensional space, resulting in a remarkably simple result for the special case of the Thomas cluster process. Using this, total interference from previous symbols and different clusters is characterized and its expected value and Laplace transform are obtained. The error probability of a simple detector suitable for biological applications is analyzed, and approximate and upper-bound results are provided. The impact of different parameters on the performance is also investigated.