A Novel A Priori Simulation Algorithm for Absorbing Receivers in Diffusion-Based Molecular Communication Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new a priori Monte Carlo algorithm for simulating molecule absorption in diffusion-based molecular communication, achieving high accuracy and efficiency over existing methods with reduced computational costs.

Contribution

The paper presents the APMC algorithm that accurately simulates absorption with larger time steps, and introduces a predictive expression for simulation accuracy and a rejection threshold to reduce complexity.

Findings

APMC matches analytical absorption fractions with larger time steps.

The predictive expression helps select optimal time steps.

Rejection threshold reduces computational complexity with minimal accuracy loss.

Abstract

A novel a priori Monte Carlo (APMC) algorithm is proposed to accurately simulate the molecules absorbed at spherical receiver(s) with low computational complexity in diffusion-based molecular communication (MC) systems. It is demonstrated that the APMC algorithm achieves high simulation efficiency since by using this algorithm, the fraction of molecules absorbed for a relatively large time step length precisely matches the analytical result. Therefore, the APMC algorithm overcomes the shortcoming of the existing refined Monte Carlo (RMC) algorithm which enables accurate simulation for a relatively small time step length only. Moreover, for the RMC algorithm, an expression is proposed to quickly predict the simulation accuracy as a function of the time step length and system parameters, which facilitates the choice of simulation time step for a given system. Furthermore, a rejection threshold is proposed for both the RMC and APMC algorithms to significantly save computational complexity while causing an extremely small loss in accuracy.