Effect of Degradation in Molecular Communication: Impairment or Enhancement?

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates how messenger molecule degradation affects molecular communication via diffusion, revealing that appropriate degradation can enhance nanonetwork performance by shaping signals and reducing interference.

Contribution

It provides the first analytical model of a spherical receiver with molecule degradation and compares its effects on communication performance with non-degradation scenarios.

Findings

Degradation can improve signal clarity and reduce inter-symbol interference.

Optimal degradation rates enhance bit error rate and channel capacity.

Signal shaping is achieved through controlled degradation.

Abstract

In the nanonetworking literature, many solutions have been suggested to enable the nanomachine-to-nanomachine communication. Among these solutions, we focus on what constitutes the basis for molecular communication paradigms --molecular communication via diffusion (MCvD). In this paper, we start with an analytical modeling of a spherical absorbing receiver under messenger molecule degradation and show that our formulations are in agreement with the simulation results of a similar topology. Next, we identify how such signal characteristics as pulse peak time and pulse amplitude are affected by degradation. Indeed, we show analytically how in MCvD, signal shaping is achieved through degradation. We also compare communication under messenger molecule degradation with the case of no-degradation and electromagnetic communication in terms of channel characteristics. Lastly, we evaluate the communication performance of the scenarios having various degradation rates. Here, we assess the system performance according to traditional network metrics such as the level of inter-symbol interference, detection performance, bit error rate, and channel capacity. Our results indicate that introducing degradation significantly improves the system performance when the rate of degradation is appropriately selected. We make a thorough analysis of the communication scenario by taking into account different detection thresholds, symbol durations, and communication distances.