A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Advancements in Molecular Communication

TL;DR

This survey reviews recent advancements in molecular communication, highlighting biological, chemical, and physical processes, recent research, and future directions for engineering reliable nanoscale communication systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent progress in molecular communication from a communication engineering perspective, including system components and future research directions.

Findings

Detailed analysis of biological, chemical, and physical processes in MC

Survey of recent engineering research on MC systems

Assessment of technology readiness and future challenges

Abstract

With much advancement in the field of nanotechnology, bioengineering and synthetic biology over the past decade, microscales and nanoscales devices are becoming a reality. Yet the problem of engineering a reliable communication system between tiny devices is still an open problem. At the same time, despite the prevalence of radio communication, there are still areas where traditional electromagnetic waves find it difficult or expensive to reach. Points of interest in industry, cities, and medical applications often lie in embedded and entrenched areas, accessible only by ventricles at scales too small for conventional radio waves and microwaves, or they are located in such a way that directional high frequency systems are ineffective. Inspired by nature, one solution to these problems is molecular communication (MC), where chemical signals are used to transfer information. Although biologists have studied MC for decades, it has only been researched for roughly 10 year from a communication engineering lens. Significant number of papers have been published to date, but owing to the need for interdisciplinary work, much of the results are preliminary. In this paper, the recent advancements in the field of MC engineering are highlighted. First, the biological, chemical, and physical processes used by an MC system are discussed. This includes different components of the MC transmitter and receiver, as well as the propagation and transport mechanisms. Then, a comprehensive survey of some of the recent works on MC through a communication engineering lens is provided. The paper ends with a technology readiness analysis of MC and future research directions.