MOL-Eye: A New Metric for the Performance Evaluation of a Molecular Signal

TL;DR

This paper introduces MOL-Eye, a novel diagram and three new metrics inspired by RF eye diagrams, for evaluating molecular communication signals, demonstrating their effectiveness in comparing modulation techniques in a vessel-like environment.

Contribution

The paper proposes MOL-Eye and three new performance metrics for molecular signals, extending evaluation tools beyond classical metrics in molecular communication.

Findings

MOL-Eye effectively visualizes molecular signal quality.

New metrics distinguish between modulation techniques.

Metrics correlate with classical performance measures.

Abstract

Inspired by the eye diagram in classical radio frequency (RF) based communications, the MOL-Eye diagram is proposed for the performance evaluation of a molecular signal within the context of molecular communication. Utilizing various features of this diagram, three new metrics for the performance evaluation of a molecular signal, namely the maximum eye height, standard deviation of received molecules, and counting SNR (CSNR) are introduced. The applicability of these performance metrics in this domain is verified by comparing the performance of binary concentration shift keying (BCSK) and BCSK with consecutive power adjustment (BCSK-CPA) modulation techniques in a vessel-like environment with laminar flow. The results show that, in addition to classical performance metrics such as bit-error rate and channel capacity, these performance metrics can also be used to show the advantage of an efficient modulation technique over a simpler one.