Interference Alignment Using Reaction in Molecular Interference Channels.

Co-channel interference (CCI) is a performance limiting factor in molecular communication (MC) systems with shared medium. Interference alignment (IA) is a promising scheme to mitigate CCI in traditional communication systems. Due to the signal-dependent noise in MC systems, the traditional IA schemes are less useful in MC systems. In this paper, we propose a novel IA scheme in molecular interference channels (IFCs), based on the choice of releasing/sampling times. To cancel the aligned interference signals and reduce the signal dependent noise, we use molecular reaction in the proposed IA scheme. We obtain the feasible region for the releasing/sampling times in the proposed scheme. Further, we investigate the error performance of the proposed scheme. Our results show that the proposed IA scheme using reaction improves the performance significantly.

Bacterial Receiver Prototype for Molecular Communication Using Rhamnose Operon in a Microfluidic Environment.

Bacterial populations are promising candidates for the development of the receiver and transmitter nanomachines for molecular communication (MC). A bacterial receiver is required to uptake the information molecules and produce the detectable molecules following a regulation mechanism. We have constructed a novel bacterial MC receiver using an inducible bacterial L-rhamnose-regulating operon. The proposed bacterial receiver produces green fluorescent protein (GFP) in response to the L-rhamnose information molecules following a quite fast regulation mechanism. To fabricate the receiver, the bacterial population has been transformed using a plasmid harboring L-rhamnose operon genes and gene expressing GFP in a microfluidic environment. We mathematically model the reception process of information molecules and characterize the model parameters by comparing the simulation results of the model in the employed microfluidic environment and the data obtained from the experimental setup. Based on the experimental results, the receiver is able to switch between different low and high concentrations. This work paves the way for the fabrication and modeling of any bacterial operon-based receiver with any proteins rather than GFP. Further, our experimental results indicate that the proposed bacterial receiver has a faster response to information molecules compared to the previous bacterial receiver based on the quorum sensing (QS) process.