Simplified Cooperative Detection for Multi-Receiver Molecular Communication

TL;DR

This paper proposes a simplified cooperative detection scheme for diffusion-based molecular communication systems, improving reliability with lower complexity by having multiple receivers send molecules to a fusion center for decision-making.

Contribution

It introduces a bio-realistic, low-complexity cooperative detection scheme with closed-form error probability expressions for different receiver topologies.

Findings

The scheme enhances reliability over non-cooperative methods.

Closed-form error probabilities are derived for symmetric and asymmetric topologies.

The simplified approach slightly reduces error performance compared to more complex schemes.

Abstract

Diffusion-based molecular communication (MC) systems experience significant reliability losses. To boost the reliability, an MC scheme where multiple receivers (RXs) work cooperatively to decide the signal of a transmitter (TX) by sending the same type of molecules to a fusion center (FC) is proposed in this paper. The FC observes the total number of molecules received and compares this number with a threshold to determine the TX's signal. The proposed scheme is more bio-realistic and requires relatively low computational complexity compared to existing cooperative schemes where the RXs send and the FC recognizes different types of molecules. Asymmetric and symmetric topologies are considered, and closed-form expressions are derived for the global error probability for both topologies. Results show that the trade-off for simplified computations leads to a slight reduction in error performance, compared to the existing cooperative schemes.