Improving performance of relay-assisted molecular communication systems using network coding

Abstract

The performance of a molecular communication system depends on various parameters like diffusion coefficients of the messenger molecules, the distance between the two communicating nanomachines, the volume of the nanomachines, the time taken for molecules to reach the receiver, and concentrations of molecules for different signals. Even after optimizing the adjustable parameters, sometimes nanomachines need to communicate with distances between them being comparably large than their optimal distances, making the communication to become unreliable. Hereby, in this paper, an intermediate nanomachine called relay is incorporated to assist the molecular communication process. Especially, network coding strategy is employed to improve the performance of the system by reducing the time taken by the signals and minimizing the error probability of detection. The numerical results will help to choose reliable parameters for the considered relay-based model of the molecular communication system. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd 2020.