High-Speed Molecular Communication in Vacuum

TL;DR

This paper proposes a vacuum-based molecular communication system inspired by TOFMS, demonstrating potential for significantly higher data rates than existing systems by using ion velocity filtering and modeling arrival times.

Contribution

It introduces a novel vacuum channel design for molecular communication, leveraging TOFMS modeling to achieve ultra-high data rates with velocity filtering techniques.

Findings

Achievable data rates above 1 Gbit/s/molecule

Velocity (Wien) filter reduces ion velocity uncertainty

Vacuum channel design significantly increases information capacity

Abstract

Existing molecular communication systems, both theoretical and experimental, are characterized by low information rates. In this paper, inspired by time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS), we consider the design of a molecular communication system in which the channel is a vacuum and demonstrate that this method has the potential to increase achievable information rates by many orders of magnitude. We use modelling results from TOFMS to obtain arrival time distributions for accelerated ions and use them to analyze several species of ions, including hydrogen, nitrogen, argon, and benzene. We show that the achievable information rates can be increased using a velocity (Wien) filter, which reduces uncertainty in the velocity of the ions. Using a simplified communication model, we show that data rates well above 1 Gbit/s/molecule are achievable.