Capacity of Diffusion based Molecular Communication Networks over LTI-Poisson Channels

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the capacity of diffusion-based molecular communication networks modeled as LTI-Poisson channels, providing finite-letter capacity characterizations, bounds, and novel methods for low SNR regimes.

Contribution

It introduces the first non-trivial upper bound on Poisson channel capacity with transmission constraints in low SNR, extending the understanding of molecular communication channels.

Findings

Finite-letter capacity characterization for LTI-Poisson channels

New bounds on channel capacity, especially in low SNR

Proposed method using symmetrized KL divergence for mutual information bounds

Abstract

In this paper, the capacity of a diffusion based molecular communication network under the model of a Linear Time Invarient-Poisson (LTI-Poisson) channel is studied. Introduced in the context of molecular communication, the LTI-Poisson model is a natural extension of the conventional memoryless Poisson channel to include memory. Exploiting prior art on linear ISI channels, a computable finite-letter characterization of the capacity of single-hop LTI-Poisson networks is provided. Then, the problem of finding more explicit bounds on the capacity is examined, where lower and upper bounds for the point to point case are provided. Furthermore, an approach for bounding mutual information in the low SNR regime using the symmetrized KL divergence is introduced and its applicability to Poisson channels is shown. To best of our knowledge, the first non-trivial upper bound on the capacity of Poisson channel with a maximum transmission constraint in the low SNR regime is found. Numerical results show that the proposed upper bound is of the same order as the capacity in the low SNR regime.