Enhanced Drug Delivery via Localization-Enabled Relaying in Molecular Communication Nanonetworks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a localization-enabled relaying mechanism in molecular communication nanonetworks to improve targeted drug delivery efficiency, addressing diffusion limitations and considering multiple absorbing nanomachines.

Contribution

It proposes a novel relaying method using localization signals and analyzes the impact of multiple absorbing nanomachines on channel response, achieving significant efficiency improvements.

Findings

Drug delivery efficiency improved by 17% with the proposed relay system.

Optimizing channel impulse response is crucial for enhancing drug delivery.

Considering multiple absorbing nanomachines affects channel characteristics and system performance.

Abstract

Intra-body nanonetworks hold promise for advancing targeted drug delivery (TDD) systems through molecular communications (MC). In the baseline MC-TDD system, drug-loaded nanomachines (DgNs) are positioned near the infected tissues to deliver drug molecules directly. To mitigate the decline in drug delivery efficiency caused by diffusion, we propose an enhanced MC-TDD system with a relay network. This network employs a novel localization-enabled relaying mechanism, where a nano-controller broadcasts a localization signal. DgNs then measure the received signal strength against thresholds to determine their clusters relative to the infected tissue. Additionally, our study considers the effect of multiple absorbing DgNs on the channel impulse response (CIR), a factor overlooked in previous works. Our approach improves drug delivery efficiency by $17\%$ compared to the baseline system. Importantly, we find that optimizing CIR is crucial for enhancing drug delivery efficiency. These findings pave the way for further research into optimizing CIR-based relay selection, as well as investigating the impact of factors such as drug molecule lifespan, obstruction probabilities, and flow dynamics.