Joint Sensing, Communication and Localization of a Silent Abnormality Using Molecular Diffusion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a molecular communication system for localizing abnormalities in a diffusion medium, integrating sensing, communication, and localization for potential biomedical applications like targeted drug delivery.

Contribution

It presents a novel joint sensing, communication, and localization framework using mobile sensors, fusion centers, and a gateway, considering both collaborative and non-collaborative sensor strategies.

Findings

Derived decision rules and error probabilities for sensor types

Analyzed system performance in ideal and noisy channels

Proposed a model applicable to targeted drug delivery

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a molecular communication system to localize an abnormality in a diffusion based medium. We consider a general setup to perform joint sensing, communication and localization. This setup consists of three types of devices, each for a different task: mobile sensors for navigation and molecule releasing (for communication), fusion centers (FC)s for sampling, amplifying and forwarding the signal, and a gateway for making decision or exchanging the information with an external device. The sensors move randomly in the environment to reach the abnormality. We consider both collaborative and non-collaborative sensors that simultaneously release their molecules to the FCs when the number of activated sensors or the moving time reach a certain threshold, respectively. The FCs amplify the received signal and forward it to the gateway for decision making using either an ideal or a noisy communication channel. A practical application of the proposed model is drug delivery in a tissue of human body, in order to guide the nanomachine bound drug to the exact location. The decision rules and probabilities of error are obtained for two considered sensors types in both ideal and noisy communication channels.